Secret letter: FBI must accelerate arrest of violent J6ers or risk time expiring
Raw Story is identifying her by her handle on X — @MsTerryMete — because of her concern about retaliation and violence from Jan. 6 offenders. She also worries that she could face retaliation from the federal government if Donald Trump becomes president again.
MsTerryMete’s warning is echoed by other members of the sedition hunters community, who have compiled a list of profiles of those suspected of committing crimes at the Capitol — some identified, others not — who have yet to be arrested. The sedition hunters, whose work is profiled in NBC reporter Ryan J. Reilly’s book of the same name, created hundreds of individual dossiers for suspected J6ers using extensive photographic and video documentation.
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A representative of the sedition hunters community sent a letter to top federal law enforcement officials on Tuesday evening that warns: “It appears that the department and the FBI are not on pace to arrest an alarmingly large percentage” of those “who committed crimes at the Capitol on January 6 but have not been charged yet.”
The letter, which Raw Story has read in draft form, is addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
The author of the letter, one of the founders of the Sedition Hunters group, said the presidential election this year factored, at least in part, in the timing of the letter. This sedition hunter, like MsTerryMete, also spoke to Raw Story on condition of anonymity when confirming the letter.
“These people have already committed political violence once, and for the more violent offenders to remain un-arrested and face no accountability is a concern to me because it’s an election year — and what’s to stop them from committing political violence again this year?” the author of the letter said. “You combine that with the dramatic increase in threats against elected officials, election workers, judges and the FBI itself, what that means is these people feel empowered and emboldened to act beyond the law because there’s been no consequences for them.”
Patricia Hartman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, told Raw Story that she would not comment on a letter that her office had not received.
The office of Attorney General Merrick Garland could not be reached for comment.
Since Donald Trump ceremonially launched his 2024 presidential election campaign in Waco, Texas — near the site of a violent FBI standoff with the Branch Davidian cult that is a touchstone for the far-right movement — the former president has put the Jan. 6 defendants at the center of his bid for a second term.
He regularly opens rallies with a recording of jailed Jan. 6 rioters singing the National Anthem and has called them “hostages.” And Trump, who himself faces 88 charges spanning four criminal indictments, regularly demonizes the Department of Justice, including lambasting the “thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system” at his Waco campaign kickoff.
Members of the sedition hunters community say they’ve observed about 3,900 people committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — a figure that includes people who breached the Capitol and those who engaged in violence on the grounds.
The figure does not include people who were on the Capitol grounds — itself a federal crime — but otherwise didn’t violate any laws. To date, the FBI has arrested upward of 1,375 people, leaving roughly 2,500 yet to be held accountable, by sedition hunters’ tally.
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Along with people who illegally entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, violent insurrectionists — those who injured police officers, brandished weapons, destroyed property and the like — are the primary focus of federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said in a press conference in January.
The number of overtly violent offenders who have yet to be arrested is about 540, according to the sedition hunters letter.
According to numbers publicly reported by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, about 626 people have been charged with assaulting law enforcement and media, or entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
Based on those numbers, the arrest rate for violent offenders would need to pick up the pace from about 16 per month to 26 per month in order to meet the deadline before the statute of limitations runs out on Jan. 6, 2026.
The author of the letter to Garland and Graves told Raw Story that after taking a break from Jan. 6 research during the warm months last year, they were concerned to find that the arrest rate had slackened rather than quickened.
“This winter, when I came back, I noticed a significant difference in the DOJ and FBI’s arrest rate — a significant decline,” they said, “and it’s obvious they’re not going to get all the people who committed crimes at the Capitol at the current arrest rate."
Identified as participating in the Capitol riot — but not charged
Individuals who took part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol — and have yet to be charged — have gone on to threaten a federal prosecutor, commit assault and armed robbery and even commit a fatal stabbing and hack a man to death with a machete.
A Pennsylvania man nicknamed “#LeadPipeGuy” by sedition hunters has been classified as an “AFO” — an FBI acronym for someone suspected of assaulting a federal officer — and appears on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
A entry on the Capitol Terrorist Attack website — a repository for Jan. 6 offender profiles compiled by a group of volunteers — describes #LeadPipeGuy as throwing a lead pipe at police on Jan. 6. He’s also seen stealing an officer’s shield.
As early as May 2021, one researcher speculated that #LeadPipeGuy had been identified to the FBI by sedition hunters. Another complained two years later that #LeadPipeGuy was among “violent people” who assaulted officers on Jan. 6, and had yet to be arrested.
Nine days later, the man was taken into custody, but not for anything he did on Jan. 6. On May 25, 2023, police arrested #LeadPipeGuy — real name: Joshua Atwood of Burgettstown, Pa. — for armed robbery and malicious assault following a weeks-long manhunt after he allegedly robbed and stabbed a restaurant owner whom he believed owed him money.
But to this day, Atwood has not been charged for his actions at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Atwood could not be reached for comment for this story.
Gabrielle Millenbruck is accused by sedition hunters of body-slamming a police line at the West Plaza of the Capitol where police faced off against rioters. Sedition Hunters’ leader publicly identified Millenbruck in February 2022 as the rioter they dubbed #CapitolCousinIt.
To date, Millenbruck, who works as a realtor in Kirkwood, Mo. — an affluent suburb of St. Louis — has not been arrested.
Reached by phone at a publicly listed number for her real estate service, a woman who answered acknowledged that she was Millenbruck, then abruptly hung up after being asked about her alleged participation in the Capitol riot.
In another example, a woman who was one of the first suspects added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List has yet to be arrested — despite admitting to the FBI that she led rioters into the Capitol with a megaphone and took a baseball from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
A photo of the woman with long, wavy brown hair tucked under a red “Keep America Great” hat is featured as “Photograph #9” on the FBI’ Most Wanted List and comes with a request to call the agency to help “identify individuals involved in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Megan Dawn Paradise sits at a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office on Jan. 6, 2021. Courtesy FBI
It didn’t take long for the FBI to track down the suspect.
Megan Dawn Paradise met with the FBI at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, 2021 — 12 days after the attack. An official FBI record of the interview indicates that Paradise was accompanied by “several attorneys.”
Among them: Danny C. Onorato, a litigator based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in white collar criminal defense and government investigations, and Setara Qassim, a criminal defense lawyer based in Los Angeles who is employed by the law firm of renowned litigator Mark Geragos.
Paradise told FBI agents that she urged Jan. 6 rioters to advance on a police line by shouting into her megaphone: “Let’s go!”
Later, when rioters massed at one of the doors to the Capitol, Paradise told the FBI that people began to back away when a flash-bang went off. She said she “used her megaphone to shout to the crowd to keep going forward and hold the line,” according to the report.
When Paradise reached Pelosi’s Office, she told agents that she sat at a desk and put her feet up on it. She admitted to taking a baseball from a display cube and a Papermate pen from the office.
Later, when she discovered the baseball was signed, Paradise said she became worried that she shouldn’t have taken it. She gave the baseball to a friend that night. The day after the riot, Paradise said, she informed her lawyer that she had taken the baseball, and she asked the friend to turn the baseball over to her lawyer.
Paradise could not be reached for comment. Onorato indicated to Raw Story that he no longer represents her.
Paradise’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, are nearly identical to those of Richard Barnett, a self-avowed “white nationalist” from Arkansas, who was seen in news reports with his feet propped up on Pelosi’s desk while smoking a cigar.
Barnett and Paradise both sat at desks in Pelosi’s office. Similar to Barnett, Paradise admitted to writing in a notebook on the desk: “You’re fired.”
But Barnett became the media poster child of the insurrection thanks in part to a widely circulated photo of him in Pelosi’s office. Paradise remains virtually unknown to the general public.
Barnett — who also stole correspondence from Pelosi’s office and left a note for Pelosi reading, “Hey Nancy, Bigo was here bi-otch” — is currently serving a 54-month sentence at FCI Seagoville in Texas, following his conviction for disorderly conduct, theft of government property and other violations.
Paradise has not been arrested and remains free.
Questions about agents’ commitment to the investigation
The draft version of the sedition hunters letter reviewed by Raw Story also expresses concern “that the identifications of alleged January 6th crimes provided by our community have not been either entered into federal information systems and/or distributed in a timely manner for FBI Field Offices or the Department of Justice.”
The FBI has revoked the security clearance of at least three agents, including, one, Brett Gloss, who reportedly entered the restricted area of the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 in violation of federal law.
Another agent, Marcus Allen, reportedly lost his security clearance after he “expressed sympathy for persons or organizations that advocate, threaten or use force or violence.”
A third, Stephen Friend, refused to take part in a SWAT arrest carried out against a Jan. 6 suspect in Florida. The letter raises concern about whether agents sympathetic to the rioters might be undermining the investigations.
“What efforts have been taken to ensure that all FBI field offices are diligently providing the DOJ with the evidence it needs to prosecute January 6 suspects?” the letter asks.
The author of the letter told Raw Story: “There doesn’t seem to be a prioritization system to arrest the most dangerous J6ers who came armed with weapons and assaulted officers. It’s concerning to me that there are going to be AFOs that have not been arrested.”
FBI headquarters declined to comment for this story.
‘You guys are going to need this information’
MsTerryMete and other sedition hunters have become increasingly alarmed over the past 12 months or so about what the letter describes as “unacceptably slow pace of arrests.”
“I am not the only one in my role experiencing frustrations and backlog,” MsTerryMete wrote in an email to David Sundberg, the assistant director for the FBI Washington Field Office, in May 2023. “The current process between my community and yours is statistically proving to not be efficient or effective. There is room and need for improvement if we are to meet both the goal and the deadline.”
MsTerryMete said she was one of at least three sedition hunters who the FBI paid to provide information by scouring public video for matches with social media accounts to identify people who allegedly committed crimes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A single mother, MsTerryMete quit her job as a substitute teacher to help the FBI track down Jan. 6 offenders, she told Raw Story.
She said she was promised $500 for each person she identified as assaulting an officer and $250 for each misdemeanor, but she said she only found out later that she wouldn’t get paid until an arrest was made.
From August 2021 through May 2023, she said, she made only $7,000 or $8,000, part of which she shared with other Jan. 6 researchers and part of which went to expenses such as a subscription to PimEyes, a facial recognition program.
By May 2023, MsTerryMete was fed up, and she dumped her designated FBI handler. She asked Sundberg for a new handler. Short of that, she offered to just hand off information about the hundreds of Jan. 6 attack suspects she had backlogged.
“Since I no longer have a handler (and I hope the old ones will be crediting me for my past work), I will need someone to work with to process the additional 220 IDs my community has been sitting on, waiting for your community to catch up,” MsTerryMete wrote to Sundberg.
“Hopefully, someone will be reaching out to be me soon, otherwise I’ll just start sending you all the evidence files,” she added.
MsTerryMete’s three emails to Sundberg in May 2023 went unreturned, she said.
The FBI Washington Field Office did not directly address a question from Raw Story about MsTerryMete’s efforts to speak with Sundberg.
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But in a statement to Raw Story, the FBI Washington Field Office said the agency “remains committed to working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and law enforcement partners across the nation to identify, investigate, and prosecute those responsible for the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“While it may appear no overt law enforcement action is being taken on some tips that have been submitted, tipsters should rest assured that the FBI is working diligently behind the scenes to follow all investigative leads to verify tips from the public and bring these criminals to justice,” the statement continues.
By July 2023, MsTerryMete and the leader of the Sedition Hunters team estimated that they had a combined 500 to 600 Jan. 6 suspect identifications backlogged between them.
But no one, from the FBI up to members of Congress, could be bothered, she said.
“Not a single person called me back,” she said. “No one. I couldn’t get the Democrat who represents my district to call me back. I literally bought a burner phone to call them safely and securely. I even called the FBI’s Boston Field Office. I said, ‘I broke with my handler. I still have this information. You guys are going to need this information. I need to transfer this information to you.’ No one called back.”
After receiving an email response from a scheduler for Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) on Sept. 11, 2023. reporting that the congressman wouldn’t be available “to schedule a meeting in the next couple months,” MsTerryMete fired off a follow-up email that brimmed with desperation and sarcasm.
“If January is the only time he has available to discuss the fact that the FBI has no central process to prioritize the remaining arrests of J6ers with 2 years left on the statute and there are currently uncharged violent J6ers roaming his congressional offices, while active naval intelligence officers are doxxing and harassing FBI agents, DOJ attorneys, and sedition hunters… then great… I’ll take it,” she wrote.
Michael Suchecki, Moulton’s press secretary, told Raw Story the congressman does not comment on scheduling matters.
Running out of time?
On Jan. 4 — two days before the third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol — Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, gave an hour-long press conference that was billed as a “progress report” on the investigation.
In many ways, Graves’ presentation showcased the government’s theory of the case writ large. It provided a narrative arc for how the attack was carried out, highlighting the most egregious acts of violence, and inventorying the weapons used by the rioters. The press conference also provided Graves with an occasion to take a victory lap for the crowning achievement of the Jan. 6 investigations — seditious conspiracy convictions obtained against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the two militant groups that provided the engine for the attack.
Graves’ press conference opened with a request for “the public’s continued assistance.” The government was particularly interested, Graves said, in “the roughly 80 still unidentified individuals who are believed to have committed acts of violence against law enforcement officers.”
Graves promised: “Today, we will post a list of individuals most wanted by the FBI for violence at the Capitol, calling for any help the public can provide in identifying them.”
“Where is that list?” the draft letter from the sedition hunters asks. “If it was provided on January 4, 2024 it must not have been circulated very publicly because we still have not seen one.”
Asked about the list referenced in Graves’ remarks, Patricia Hartman, the spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, referred Raw Story to the FBI’s Most Wanted List, a working document that the agency has been building since shortly after the Jan. 6 attack.
The FBI Most Wanted list includes 216 profiles suspected of assaults on law enforcement and media who have not been arrested. Sedition hunters claim to have sent the names of at least 19 of those suspects to the FBI, based on a review by Raw Story.
When the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued its annual report on progress made in the Jan. 6 investigation requesting public assistance to identify four of the subjects, sedition hunters reacted with ridicule, noting that they had already provided the names of three of the men to the FBI.
“One of the problems right now is some of the information that we’re providing to the FBI doesn’t appear to be getting acted on in a timely manner,” the sedition hunter responsible for authoring the letter told Raw Story. “That spans from adding profiles to their Most Wanted list to making arrests.”
Screen grab from U.S. Office of Government Ethics emails
Screen grab from U.S. Office of Government Ethics emails
Screen grab from U.S. Office of Government Ethics emails
Screen grab from U.S. Office of Government Ethics emails
Screen grab from U.S. Office of Government Ethics emails
Source: Twitter
An April 2 statement posted to Facebook by the congressional campaign of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Source: Facebook
William Beals, a 15-year-old boy and Sean Kauffmann (l-r) outside a drag show in Cookeville, Tenn., on Jan. 22. Robert Bray is in the background at left. (Courtesy Josh Brandon)
Assemblyman Ken Gray (R-Dayton) speaks with Assembly Minority Leader P.K. O'Neill (R-Carson City) inside the Legislature on April 14, 2023 in Carson City. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), then Lauren Roberts, in a yearbook photo from her sophomore year at Rifle High School in Colorado. Mark Alesia/Raw Story
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), then Lauren Roberts, in a yearbook photo from her freshman year at Rifle High School in Colorado. Mark Alesia/Raw Story
As seen in the Rifle High School yearbook, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), then Lauren Roberts (front row, far right), as a sophomore cheerleader at Rifle High School in Colorado before dropping out. Mark Alesia/Raw Story
Sign at Rifle High School in Rifle, Colo., where Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), then Lauren Roberts, went to high school before dropping out. Mark Alesia/Raw Story