There’s a growing number of legal threats to DOJ’s Jan. 6 cases

For nearly four years, federal prosecutors have tracked, charged and imprisoned hundreds of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But what once seemed to be a shock-and-awe campaign of prosecutorial force — one the department has regularly characterized as the largest and most complex investigation in history — appears increasingly squeezed by legal challenges and political threats.

Ongoing court battles threaten to erase or undermine some of the 1,500 cases that have been brought against participants in the riot. And prosecutors’ tactical choices are the subject of new scrutiny from appeals courts. Those disputes could wind up in another high-stakes confrontation before the Supreme Court.

The high court has already gutted the key felony charge that prosecutors have used in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, leading the Justice Department to drop a slew of its most serious criminal counts. And a federal appeals court rejected another tactic prosecutors had used to drive up sentences for Jan. 6 defendants, forcing judges to recalculate prison time in some cases.