More than 30 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups are being sued by US District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine in an effort to recoup the millions of dollars the city spent to reclaim the Capitol during the January 6 attack.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday (14) in federal court in Washington, DC, accuses 31 members of extremist groups of “conspiring to terrorize the district” on Jan. 6, calling their actions “a coordinated act of domestic terrorism ”.
Racine is asking the court to hold the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys responsible for the millions of dollars officials spent dispatching Metropolitan Police Department officers to Capitol Hill, along with the enormous expense of treating injured officers and paying for their sick leave in the months after the attack.
Three officers from the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police departments died in the days after the attack, and more than 140 officers were wounded.
“No one has withstood the brunt of this cowardly attack more than courageous police officers, including the men and women of the DC Metropolitan Police Department, who entered the fire and violence with one goal in mind: to remove the raging mob and restore the fragility of our country democratically,” Racine said at a press conference on Tuesday.
This is not the first civil action brought against members of extremist groups that invaded the Capitol on 6 January. Several members of Congress have sued leaders of the two organizations, as well as former President Donald Trump and his former attorney Rudy Giuliani, for conspiracy to incite the attack.
Seven Capitol officers also filed a similar lawsuit against the former president and the leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
This latest DC Attorney General’s file details how members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys allegedly devised a plan for violence on Jan. 6, with guns and tactical equipment.
“The defendants, as you know, were not tourists, nor did they act patriotically,” Racine said. “They were vigilantes, members of a mob, rebels who sought to crush the freedoms of our country.”
Racine’s lawsuit does not specify the amount of money the city is seeking, but he said his office will seek “the maximum financial fines.”
The Department of Justice has already accused several members of the Oath Keepers of federal criminal conspiracy. Prosecutors have been building their case for months, divulging details of how the group allegedly gathered and hid weapons in a northern Virginia hotel as part of their so-called Quick Reaction Force, and how they communicated during the attack.
The court cases against the group’s members also detail how most Oath Keeper defendants are accused of taking part in a military-like formation to get through the crowd and enter the Capitol.
See some of the characters involved in the January 6 US Capitol invasion
Reference: CNN Brasil
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