Lindsey Graham calls for task force to identify, prosecute members of violent Capitol Hill mob

By Ian Miles Cheong
|
January 07, 2021

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool

By Keean Bexte

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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has called for a joint task force to be assembled to identify, arrest, charge and imprison members of the violent mob that besieged the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, describing them as “domestic terrorists.”

During the riot on Wednesday, hundreds of Trump supporters raided the Capitol building in Washington D.C. Four people died, including a woman who was shot by Capitol Police.

In a fiery statement on Thursday, Graham said that the task force will spend “time and money to identify every person who breached the security of the Capitol, who occupied the chambers, who invaded offices and destroyed property.”

Several members of the mob have since been identified on social media, including far-right agitators who streamed the violence on the social media platform DLive.

Axios reports that several “familiar faces from the far-right web” swarmed the Capitol, including former YouTube livestreamer Nick Fuentes, livestreamer Dylan “Angry Viking” Stevens, and former BuzzFeed staffer Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet.

Lindsey Graham has called for every single one of the insurrectionists in the Capitol to be identified, arrested, charged, and imprisoned. Sedition may be a charge.

"The people sitting in the chairs need to be sitting in a jail cell." They're finished. pic.twitter.com/rAr5ZZIQ5a
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) January 7, 2021

“There is a ton of video evidence out there. I was interviewed this morning by two FBI agents. They came to my house wanting to know if I had any surveillance cameras outside my house – I did not, but I am encouraged they’re on the case,” said Graham.

“Trust me, in the social media world that exists today it won’t be that hard to find thousands of people who took law into their own hands,” said Graham. “The people sitting in the chairs need to be sitting in a jail cell. The people who attacked the Capitol Police need to be charged with attacking a police officer. Sedition may be a charge of some of these people.”

“So I will for the next six years, God willing, every week ask of the Department of Justice, starting with this Department of Justice, and the next Department of Justice, ‘what kind of progress are you making in holding those accountable – the domestic terrorists who took over the house and senate chambers and laid waste to Capitol Hill,’” added Graham.

“What do you need that you don’t have? If you need more prosecutors, money will not be an object. If you need more investigators, we will provide you the resources. This is a moment for the nation to show will and determination to be a nation of laws, that anarchy shall not reign. The constitution controls, not the mob,” he concluded.

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