Three years on, there is no shortage of reflection pieces about the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. Within hours of the breach, federal law enforcement officers from across the country began mobilizing into what would become a criminal investigation unlike any other in history. There was no blueprint.

Nevertheless, levelheaded thinking by DOJ leaders, as well as a national cache of dedicated FBI counterterrorism investigators, quickly overcame the “American carnage.” A decision was made nearly immediately to centralize the prosecutions out of the District of Columbia, prioritizing the most violent of the rioters. In the months that followed, federal prosecutors from across the country were detailed away from their duty stations to assist in D.C., a district whose dockets had expanded to a near breaking point virtually overnight.