Proud Boys and Oath Keepers sued by D.C. attorney general over January 6 attack
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced Tuesday that his office is suing the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over the January 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol complex. Using a law that had been used to go after the Ku Klux Klan, the civil lawsuit will try to obtain financial relief from the groups.
The lawsuit also marks the first civil lawsuit by a government agency to seek penalties for the attack on Congress by a crowd of pro-Trump protestors in an attempt to stop the certification of President Joe Biden's electoral victory. The suit says the defendants are responsible for "conspiring to terrorize the District by planning, promoting, and participating in the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol Building."
The civil war-era law was recently used for the first time in modern history in the civil lawsuit Sines v. Kessler, which won $26 million in compensatory and punitive damages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis who helped organize the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The "Ku Klux Klan Act," an 1871 statute, was designed to protect African Americans from the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.
The lawsuit names both individual defendants, like alleged members of the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zach Rehl, as well as those allegedly associated with the Oath Keepers, Thomas Caldwell, Donovan Crowl, and Jessica Watkins. The larger organizations of Proud Boys International, LLC, and the Oath Keepers are also named as defendants.
Racine says the goal of the lawsuit is to receive "full restitution and recompense" for the city and its law enforcement officers.
That day, one Metropolitan Police officer died from a stroke after he was attacked by a mob of rioters on Capitol grounds. In the days and months after the attack, four more police officers, all of whom responded to the Capitol that day, have since died by suicide.
"While some desperately want to rewrite history and sweep the events of January 6 under the rug, the District of Columbia and its residents have chosen to speak truth through this filing," Racine said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. "So to our law enforcement officers who were injured in the course of stopping a violent mob hell bent on taking away our freedoms, again, restitution and recompense, those are American values."
The Justice Department has brought conspiracy charges against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their alleged participation in the attack. Prosecutors have called their probe into January 6 "unprecedented" in scale, and the government has said in court that the Capitol attack "is likely the most complex investigation ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice."
The lawsuit is being litigated by the D.C. Attorney General's office, but is supported by the States United Democracy Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
D.C.'s non-voting member in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, said Tuesday she supported the lawsuit, as it would seek financial relief the city needed for the treatment of law enforcement that was not included in the federal funding provided in the wake of the attack.
"It is appropriate that the perpetrators of the attack compensate D.C. for the other costs D.C. incurred that day, including for medical treatment, and paid leave," Norton said at the press conference.
The lawsuit states that the week of January 6, D.C's Metropolitan Police Department "incurred millions of dollars in costs," and the city has faced a "steep" financial burden.
"Our intent, as we indicated, is to hold these violent mobsters and these violent hate groups accountable and to get every penny of damage that we can. Let me tell you, if it so happens that we bankrupt them, then that's a good day when hate is dispatched and eliminated," Racine said.