Biden's Justice Department wants to hire 131 more lawyers to prosecute January 6 cases

• Deputy AG Lisa Monaco said the January 6 inquiry is among the "most complex" the government has ever handled.
• Monaco said the funding would alleviate pressure on prosecutors' offices that have pitched in.

The Justice Department wants to hire 131 additional lawyers to help with the hundreds of prosecutions stemming from the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, according to the Biden administration's budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.

Rolling out the Justice Department's portion of that request Monday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco emphasized the scope of the January 6 investigation, which law enforcement officials have repeatedly described as unprecedented.

In the nearly 15 months since a pro-mob stormed the Capitol, the Justice Department has brought more than 770 prosecutions, including cases charging members of far-right groups with seditious conspiracy.

"The January 6 investigation is among the most wide-ranging and most complex that this department has ever undertaken. It reaches nearly every US attorney's office, nearly every FBI field office," Monaco said.

"Regardless of whatever resources we seek or get, let's be very, very clear: We are going to continue to do those cases. We are going to hold those perpetrators accountable, no matter where the facts lead us, [and] as the attorney general has said, no matter at what level. We will do those cases," she added.

The Justice Department is seeking $34.1 million to bring on additional attorneys for the January 6 investigation. In total, Biden administration has requested nearly $37.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Justice Department, a more than $2.6 billion increase from the amount approved for the current fiscal year.

The request comes on the heels of the Justice Department securing convictions in the first trial connected to the Capitol attack. Earlier this month, a jury found a Texas man named Guy Reffitt guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds with a handgun, along with separate charges related to January 6. Reffitt, a member of the far-right Three Percenters militia, is set for sentencing on June 8.

Two weeks after Reffitt's conviction, a federal judge found Cowboys for Trump leader Couy Griffin guilty of trespassing on Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of a year in prison. Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted Griffin on a separate disorderly conduct charge and set his sentencing for June 17.

Monaco, the second-ranking Justice Department official, said the requested funding would alleviate the pressure on US attorneys' offices that have pitched in to assist with the sprawling January 6 investigation.

The prosecution of those cases, she said, "draws on resources from across the US attorneys' offices — those same resources that are needed to fight violent crime, those same resources that are needed to investigate corporate crime across the country. Those same resources that are going to help us enforce our civil rights laws."

The January 6 prosecutions have targeted not only those accused of storming the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying now-President Joe Biden's electoral victory.

Last year, federal prosecutors secured an indictment charging former President Donald Trump's onetime chief strategist, Steve Bannon, with contempt of Congress over his defiance of the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Bannon's trial is scheduled to begin in July.

The House also recommended that the Justice Department charge Trump's former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with criminal contempt of Congress. But the Justice Department has so far not brought a case stemming from that referral.

On Monday, the January 6 committee is planning to vote to hold two other onetime Trump advisors — Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro — in contempt for defying subpoenas seeking documents and testimony.

Earlier on Monday, the House committee scored a victory in court when a federal judge in California ordered the conservative lawyer John Eastman to turn over more than 100 emails to the panel.

In the ruling, Judge David Carter said Trump "likely" committed the felony offense of obstructing Congress when he pushed to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results.