Washington Even though President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he will pardon an unspecified number of the more than 1,500 individuals accused in connection with the attack, the Justice Department is still prosecuting and arresting Jan. 6 rioters with less than 50 days until he returns to the White House.
Online investigators told NBC News that over 90 individuals are still listed on the FBI’s Capitol Violence page, which includes images of the agency’s most wanted rioters who have been identified but not yet taken into custody. Additionally, hundreds more rioters who were not listed on the Capitol Violence page and might never be prosecuted have been found by the detectives who have assisted in those cases.
According to a law enforcement official who spoke to NBC News last month, the Justice Department intends to concentrate on making arrests and pursuing the most serious cases with little time left, especially those involving individuals who would be charged with felony assault on law personnel.
Among them is a man who has been unpunished for years after attacking police officers and being recognized by internet detectives as a rioter. According to information obtained by NBC News, the FBI searched a home address connected to the man in recent weeks.
Due to his appearance on footage of the Jan. 6 attack, where he was seen brandishing double-fisting spray canisters that he seemed to employ to attack police officers with chemical spray on the west front of the U.S. Capitol, the rioter is known to internet serial killers as Old Double Shot.Later, footage surfaced showing what appears to be the same man using a rod to strike police as the crowd pushed its way up the stairs and nearer the Capitol. He was wearing a Trump camouflage hat and a T-shirt that he draped on his back like a cape.
Both pepper spray and bear spray were used on cops during the Capitol attack, and many of the rioters who were found guilty of these crimes were sentenced to prison.
Online investigators told NBC News that when they ran the photos of Old Double Shot through publicly accessible facial recognition software in the weeks following the Capitol attack, they discovered an old video of a man who remarkably resembled him at a Tea Party rally and a more recent video of a man who looked like him outside a Trump rally. They also found a man named Michael Koetting and the website of Koetting Insurance in Germantown, Illinois, according to facial recognition software.
They claim to have given it to the FBI over three years ago, making Old Double Shot one of the detectives’ first identifications. Old Double Shot has never been apprehended, however his picture did show up in another affidavit dated January 6, as reported by NBC News in February.
However, NBC News reported that the FBI had recently searched a home location linked to Koetting in public databases. An FBI official confirmed to NBC News that FBI Springfield executed a search order at the address in question after a BBC reporter initially reported that a search related to January 6 occurred in a small hamlet in southern Illinois.
Requests for comment on this article and earlier 2021 reporting from Koetting were not answered. The FBI simply confirmed that it carried out a search warrant at the address linked to Koetting; it doesn’t comment on cases in which charges haven’t been filed, as is customary procedure.
Michael Koetting has been removed from the Koetting Insurance website in the nearly four years since the Capitol attack. The employee who answered the phone claimed that he was no longer connected to the company, that they had no contact information for him, and that they were unsure if he was still in the country. The worker acknowledged that the FBI had searched Koetting’s house, which is next door to the insurance business, but claimed that the business itself had not.
The FBI’s Capitol Violence website, which usually includes pictures of people of interest who haven’t been identified to the FBI, never included any images of Old Double Shot. People haven’t usually been added to the website when the FBI already has identities or reliable leads because it was created to collect new public tips.
More than 1,100 of the more than 1,500 defendants the FBI has arrested since Jan. 6 have been convicted by federal prosecutors on crimes ranging from seditious conspiracy against the United States to misdemeanor unlawful picketing or parading. Over 600 individuals have received prison sentences ranging from a few days to a record-breaking 22 years in federal prison for former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
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