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NEWS FEBRUARY 1, 2021 ¦ 23

‘All In’: Prosecutors in Capitol Riot Cases Bring
Years of Experience, Varied Backgrounds

By C. Ryan Barber

Trump supporters rioting at the US Capitol. Photo: Sebastian Portillo/Shutterstock.com

In 2018, when then-Special Counsel Robert Muel- of former President Donald Trump, Rakoczy has
ler III accused Russian firms of bankrolling a found herself prosecuting conduct that has been
social media-fired campaign to interfere in the widely decried as undermining American democ-
2016 election, Kathryn Rakoczy was among the ca- racy itself.
reer federal prosecutors in Washington who would In the three weeks since the deadly insurrection,
join the prosecution team. the U.S. attorney’s office has filed more than 150
When Mueller wrapped up his investigation the cases in federal court and more than 50 in Wash-
following year, Rakoczy took on a more prominent ington’s local Superior Court, all stemming from
role, personally submitting many of the briefs the an investigation that a top FBI official described
U.S. attorney’s office in Washington filed after inher- Tuesday as “unique in its magnitude and number of
iting the case from Mueller. It was a case that struck subjects.” Federal investigators are pursuing inqui-
at the core of Mueller’s mandate to probe Russia’s in- ries into more than 400 suspects and have received
fluence efforts, addressing conduct that then-Deputy more than 200,000 tips from the public in the form
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said was designed of digital media.
to “undermine public confidence in democracy.” For the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, it has
Now, as the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington required an all-hands effort, pulling in prosecutors
takes on the wave of criminal cases rising out of the with varied expertise and backgrounds bringing
Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters
¦ Continued on PAGE 24

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