Why did NPR build an archive of January 6th documents?

0:01And we fight. We fight like hell. It has been five years since the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the building, trying to stop the certification of the presidential election. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore. In the years since, journalists, investigators and historians have tried to piece together and understand what happened that day. And at NPR, investigative reporter Tom Dreisbach wanted to do even more. He led an ambitious team effort to preserve a comprehensive record of those events for future generations.

0:41The January 6th archive is a timeline of the moments before, during, and after that attack. Built from video evidence gathered over many years. It also includes a database tracking every criminal case tied to January 6th. We kind of thought of it as like a January 6th museum in a way, where it covered different aspects of that day, the violence, the weapons people used, the motivations of people, and tried to preserve in a way this history of what happened that day at a time when the government has been actively trying to erase or whitewash or otherwise distort the events of January 6th. Consider this as the narrative around the January 6th attack continues to change, NPR reporters built an archive to document what happened.

1:34From NPR, I'm Emily Kwong.

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2:32It's Consider This from NPR. Five years ago, after the attack on the Capitol during the certification of the 2020 election, NPR set out to gather thousands of videos, court exhibits, and records from that day into one place to create a comprehensive archive of what happened and to preserve it at a time when the public narrative around January 6th continues to change. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I wanted to talk with NPR's Tom Dreisbach about how the project came together and what it took to document years of work. So I started by asking him how long he thinks he spent on it. I could not quantify.

3:10You know, the work started on January 6th itself of 2021. So that was more than five years ago. So that was really days and days and weeks and months of my life was obsessively watching video. We started noticing from the criminal cases that a number of the people being arrested had served in the military or had connections to the military or even active duty military service members in some capacity. And so we had this thought, OK, could we actually put some numbers to this? And we did a story pretty early on, I think just a few weeks after the attack.

3:44Tom Dreisbach:By NPR's count, nearly 20 % of people charged in connection with the attack and rioting are veterans. NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach is here to talk about what we found. Hi, Tom. Hey, Ari. That number has since gone down to about 14%. But it was a significant enough number that it led to a review by the Pentagon of extremism in the ranks. And we realized, oh, wow, if this could lead to information and impact for the public that people were really interested in, what else can we learn by taking comprehensive approach? And then we decided, well, if we're going to do this, we should make it available to the public.

4:19We would read every single arrest record and there would be these arrest affidavits written by FBI agents that would kind of tell the story of each person's participation in the riot. We tracked things like the number of people who had ties to extremist groups, so like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers or people who were followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. And out of that, you know, we picked individual stories that were interesting but also just tried to get a comprehensive picture. And so, you know, there was a question, well, what are the outcomes going to be from all these investigations and arrests?

4:53And we were able to put numbers to that, like that the median sentence was 30 days in jail. About a third of people who were actually sentenced got no jail time at all. Wow. I'm really curious about this group of people, this over 1 ,500 people from all 50 states who were arrested in connection to January 6th. What else did you learn about them as people? Oh, it's such a varied group. One guy that we ended up profiling was a man named Jason Riddle. He was a big-time Trump supporter. He loved just sort of the attention it got him. He loved being in people's faces. He also had a drinking problem.

5:31He's very open about this now. He was an alcoholic. And he kind of was lost in his life a little bit. And when he heard about the January 6th rally, he was excited. He was like, yeah, he's been to, you know, more than a dozen Trump rallies in his life. He calls it like a party. So he went into the building. He stormed the Capitol. He found a bottle of wine inside, was drinking it until a police officer said, like, get the heck out of here. And he was sentenced for his participation. He got 90 days in jail. But the process of going through the criminal justice system led him to get sober. And in the process of getting sober and dealing with his alcoholism, he started to rethink a lot of things in his life, including his support for Trump.

6:19Trump is promoting criminal behavior. That was a criminal act. January 6th was a crime. And I think it's going to result in more death eventually. There's going to be another riot. Something's going to happen if you keep promoting these lies. That's what January 6th was. It was a result of his lies. On the other hand, there's many, many people who see themselves as victims, as martyrs in some way, and that they believe that they're still victims and they deserve restitution from the federal government. There's one man named Jake Lang who said he is still willing to use violence. I'm very proud to have done what I did on January 6th, and I think that it was just the beginning of what America needs to cleanse itself.

7:00And then, of course, when it comes to President Trump himself, how he publicly talks about this day has changed, too. What was the moment that you realized that this history was being rewritten by the president himself and by others? It started kind of slowly and then seemed to be all at once. Over time, you know, Trump just embraced the January 6th defendants. He started to just say that, no, they didn't do anything wrong. He had gone from like he said that they had defiled the seat of democracy and they must pay. They must pay for their crimes to saying that they were actually the victims. And he really made his entire 2024 presidential campaign in part about the January 6th defendants.

7:44And so it became clear that the narrative about what actually happened that day was being rewritten before our eyes. And at a time when we were getting more and more information from court records about what actually had happened because we were getting so much more video and so many more verdicts in these cases that were being proven factually in court at the same time as it felt like the public's understanding was slipping away from us. That sounds like a call to action as a journalist. Like they say that journalists write the first draft of history. But in this case, you're recovering the first draft of history or at least the elements for the first draft of history.

8:24And that was on you all to do because it's who if not you, then who it sounds like is what you were thinking. That's what it felt like. It was like, I'm actually not sure anyone is going to do this. And I started getting calls over this process from prosecutors who were like, hey, I actually was looking for the record from this case that I prosecuted related to January 6th. Do you have it? And in some cases I was able to help. But over time, it just became clear that if we didn't do this, then it's possible some of this stuff would be destroyed forever. What kind of story did you want to tell with the authority you had of all the materials?

9:00How did you choose to like focus it? Well, there's not one story you can tell from this. And our hope is that with the archive, people can find a lot of those stories themselves. They can look at individual cases. They can view surveillance footage, body cam footage for themselves and see what happened that day. And maybe discover stories that even we didn't realize were there in the archives. And so our approach was not just telling one story but trying to make sure that this history is available for future generations. How do you ultimately hope January 6th will be remembered? One of the overriding feelings or thoughts that I had throughout the process of reporting this was the level of violence and the level of terror felt by people who were inside the Capitol or defending the Capitol as police officers.

9:57You know, it can be sanitized in many cases and has been sanitized by the administration. And so in some ways, I hope people remember just how traumatic that day was, you know, for the country, arguably, and certainly for all the people who were there. Trump likes to refer to January 6th as a day of love. And I think of it as a day of loss. Everyone connected to that day, you know, seemed to lose something. So it's not for me to say ultimately how people remember that day, but I just hope people remember the specifics and the human lives that were at the center of what happened at the Capitol.

10:39Tom Dreisbach is a correspondent on NPR's investigations team. You can look through the reporting and see all the evidence for yourself at npr.org slash J6 Archive. Tom, thank you so much. Thanks so much, Emily. This episode was produced by Lina Muhammad and Daniel Offman. It was edited by Sarah Robbins. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. Let's Consider This. I'm Emily Kwong. Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, sparked a movement to warn kids and their parents about the harms of social media.

11:14Tom Dreisbach:Yes, my claim is that will change brain development in ways that will make you less capable, confident, happy. and sociable as an adult. But what do young people think? Gen Z is just going to think, well, we're cursed. That's on the TED Radio Hour. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, it's not so much we get to talk to celebrities, it's that we get to talk to celebrities about other celebrities, like we did with actor Nathan Lane. I remember having to tell George C. Scott that I was leaving the show to do this musical, and he said to me, you're leaving me to do a f***ing magic show?

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