How Many People Were Arrested for Jan 6? Charges, Pardons, Pipe Bombs

Federal authorities arrested roughly 1,583 people from all 50 states in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, making it the largest federal criminal investigation in American history.¹ Almost all of those cases were wiped out on January 20, 2025, when President Donald Trump issued mass pardons and commutations on his first day back in office.²

The exact figure varies slightly by source and date, landing between 1,575 and 1,583 arrests.³ The Justice Department also declined to prosecute roughly 400 additional people whose conduct amounted only to trespassing.¹ About 418 of those arrested were accused of violence, and roughly 12 percent had ties to extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or Three Percenters.

Who the Defendants Were

A Seton Hall University study of the first 716 people prosecuted found that 87 percent were men, ranging in age from 18 to 81, with the largest group in their 30s.⁴ Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, and California together produced roughly 43 percent of defendants. North Dakota, Nebraska, and Vermont were the only states with none.⁵

Where employment data was available for 430 defendants, about a quarter were business owners, 17 percent worked blue-collar jobs, and about 9 percent worked white-collar jobs. Only 35 were identified as unemployed. Roughly 18.5 percent had a military or law enforcement background, and 22 percent had a prior criminal record.⁴⁵

What They Were Charged With

Charges spanned a broad range. Nearly everyone arrested faced at least a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol illegally, most often under the federal trespass statute or disorderly conduct provisions. As of January 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland reported that about 45 percent of those arrested faced felony charges and 55 percent were charged only with misdemeanors.¹

The most common felony charges involved violence against police. More than 600 people were charged with assaulting or impeding federal officers, and 174 of them faced enhanced counts for using a weapon or causing bodily injury. Other felony charges included destroying government property (91 defendants), stealing government property (68), and various conspiracy counts (about 57).¹

The most serious charge was seditious conspiracy, a rarely used felony carrying up to 20 years in prison. Eighteen people were charged with it, all connected to the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys; ten were convicted at trial and four pleaded guilty.¹ A jury convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and several associates of seditious conspiracy in 2022 and 2023.⁶

Convictions and Sentences Before the Pardons

By the four-year anniversary of the attack, about 1,270 defendants (80 percent of those arrested) had been convicted. Roughly 1,009 pleaded guilty, 221 were convicted by a judge or jury, and 40 were convicted through stipulated trials. Only two defendants were fully acquitted. Over 300 cases had not yet gone to trial, and around 200 more were still under FBI review.¹

More than 1,000 defendants had been sentenced before the pardons took effect. About 64 percent received jail or prison time; the rest received probation or other non-incarceration penalties. The median sentence overall was 30 days. Among those who received any incarceration, the median was 210 days.³

The longest sentences went to the leaders of the extremist groups. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio received 22 years for seditious conspiracy, the longest of any January 6 defendant.³ Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years.⁷ Several defendants convicted of assaulting officers received 12 to 20 years.⁸ A Washington Post analysis found that judges, on average, imposed lighter punishments for January 6 assault convictions than for comparable assault cases nationally.⁹

The Supreme Court’s Fischer Ruling

In June 2024, the Supreme Court narrowed one of the statutes prosecutors had relied on heavily. Fischer v. United States held 6-3 that 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), the federal obstruction statute, applies only to conduct that impairs the availability or integrity of records, documents, or other evidence used in an official proceeding, rejecting the government’s broader reading that covered physical disruption of the certification.¹⁰

The ruling potentially affected about 350 defendants charged with obstruction. For roughly 50 of them, it was the only felony count, though Garland stated at the time that no defendant had been charged solely with the obstruction offense at issue.¹¹ Within months, the mass pardons overtook the ruling’s practical significance.

Trump’s Pardons and Commutations

On January 20, 2025, Trump signed a proclamation granting a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to everyone convicted of January 6 offenses and directing the Attorney General to dismiss all pending indictments with prejudice.² The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia began filing motions to dismiss the more than 300 cases still pending in federal court.¹²

Fourteen defendants received commutations rather than full pardons. All were linked to the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, including Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio. Their prison sentences were reduced to time served, releasing them, but their convictions remained on the record.² Tarrio himself later received a full pardon despite having initially been among the 14 who were only commuted.⁷

In April 2026, the Justice Department went further, asking a federal appeals court to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 of the commuted Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members. If granted, the move would wipe out the most serious convictions produced by the investigation. As of mid-2026, those requests were still pending judicial approval.¹³¹⁴

What Has Happened Since the Pardons

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported that at least 40 pardoned defendants have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes since the attack, with at least 12 allegedly reoffending after receiving their pardons. The new charges include child sex crimes, illegal weapons possession, and threats against members of Congress. There is no traditional monitoring or parole process for people who receive presidential pardons.¹⁵

The scope of the pardon has produced its own litigation. The Justice Department initially took the position that the pardon did not cover unrelated conduct discovered during January 6 investigations, such as firearms found in home searches, but later reversed itself, arguing the pardon reached that evidence too. In the case of Daniel Edwin Wilson, a federal judge rejected the department’s revised reading and held the pardon did not extend to separate gun charges. Trump then issued a second, specific pardon for Wilson.⁸

Pardoned defendants have also begun seeking money from the federal government. Attorney Peter Ticktin has filed Federal Tort Claims Act administrative claims for about 200 clients, with more planned. In June 2026, nine pardoned defendants sued in Washington, D.C., seeking at least $1 million each and alleging they were “wrongly and vindictively prosecuted.” The Trump administration has moved to dismiss at least one such suit.¹⁶

The administration has also unwound the investigation’s institutional footprint. The government deleted its public database of January 6 cases and removed court exhibits from a public site.³ Approximately 15 assistant U.S. attorneys who worked on January 6 prosecutions were fired on January 31, 2025, with termination letters explicitly citing their work on the cases; additional senior prosecutors were fired or demoted in the months that followed.¹⁷ Acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin dissolved the section responsible for January 6 prosecutions and launched an internal review of the tactics used in them.¹⁸

One Case Still Moving Forward: The Pipe Bombs

The pardons did not touch a related investigation into the pipe bombs planted at the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters the evening before the attack. In December 2025, the FBI arrested Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old Virginia resident, accusing him of building and planting the devices on January 5, 2021.¹⁹ Investigators linked Cole to the bombs through purchase records for components, cell phone location data placing him near the sites, and license plate reader records for his vehicle. Cole reportedly confessed and cited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election as his motivation. He was charged with transporting explosives across state lines and attempting to use bombs to destroy property, a federal terrorism offense carrying up to 20 years.²⁰

1
Lawfare. The High-Water Mark of the Jan. 6 Prosecutions
2
The White House. Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021
3
NPR. The Jan. 6 Archive
4
Forbes. A New Seton Hall University Report Profiles the People Prosecuted for January 6 Insurrection
5
Seton Hall University. A Demographic and Legal Profile of January 6 Prosecutions
6
PBS NewsHour. Jury Finds 4 Oath Keepers Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Case
7
BBC News. Trump Pardons About 1,500 Capitol Riot Defendants on First Day in Office
8
House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Ranking Member Raskin: Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons Look Even More Awful a Year Later
9
Washington Post. January 6 Riot Sentences
10
SCOTUSblog. Justices Rule for Jan. 6 Defendant
11
PBS NewsHour. Supreme Court Makes It Harder to Charge Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Defendants With Obstruction
12
WUSA9. Justice Department Begins Dismissing Hundreds of Remaining Jan. 6 Cases
13
CNN. Justice Department Moves to Vacate Seditious Conspiracy Convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers
14
NPR. Trump Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Seditious Conspiracy
15
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. At Least 33 Pardoned Insurrectionists Face Other Criminal Charges
16
The Guardian. January 6 Defendants Compensation Process
17
Lawfare. Trump’s Petty Purge of 15 Young Jan. 6 Prosecutors
18
Stanford Law Review. Executive Branch Attacks on January 6 Prosecutors: A Notable Case of Democratic Backsliding
19
CNN. Brian Cole Jr. FBI Investigation
20
Politico. Pipe Bomb Justice Department Jan. 6 Suspect