No. of Recommendations: 9
A *subset* of folks were charged.
Of course. It's hard to charge people just for protesting - when only a *subset* of a very large group of people are engaged in actual criminal activity, you're going to end up with that.
And even of the subset that engaged in criminal behavior, they weren't doing it in so obviously provable and identifiable ways as the hundreds of folks walking around in the Capitol. Set aside the fact that they're committing their crimes in full view of all the many news networks and other journalists who were there to cover the event - they're all carrying around their own cell phones, taking pictures and video of themselves (and fellow rioters), dressing up in ways to call attention to themselves, and posting their stuff on Facebook. When merely being in the Capitol during that specific time is evidence that you've broken the law to get there, that makes prosecution pretty easy.
Most of the folks who used the protests as cover to commit crimes were not so foolhardy. And even when they do something foolhardy (like Simone posting a FB Live), it's still not going to support a prosecution. With just a nighttime video of a Simone handing something that appeared to be a long gun? What could you charge him with? If you don't know the person he gave it to, or identify the weapon and who it belonged to, or even whether it was in fact an actual weapon....you'd never get that to stand up in court. You'd have to at least offer some evidence that it was a gun and that the person he was handing it to wasn't the lawful owner - which is hard if you don't know who that person was. Whereas if someone's taking selfies of themselves in the Capitol building (with GIS metadata and time stamping and all the other rioters in the background)...well, that's a bit of a slam dunk.
