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Jan. 6 offenders have paid only a fraction of restitution owed for damage to U.S. Capitol during riot
Washington — Nearly 3 1/2 years after the U.S. Capitol siege, the government has recovered only a fraction of the court-ordered restitution payments for repairs, police injuries and cleanup of the damage caused by the rioters.
Hundreds of offenders who pleaded guilty or were convicted for their roles in the Capitol attack were ordered to pay for injuries to police officers who defended the Capitol and reimbursement to the architect of the Capitol to help offset the costs of repairs as a result of damage from Jan. 6, 2021.
Although the Justice Department and Capitol administrators have estimated the costs of cleanup and repairs were nearly $3,000,000, approximately 15% of the money has been paid back so far, according to a review by CBS News.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A congressional source familiar with the matter told CBS News that approximately $437,000 has been reimbursed by Jan. 6 offenders to the architect of the Capitol.
Government document
Court-ordered restitution, often ranging from between $500 to $2,000 per Jan. 6 offender, has become a standard sentencing component — at least 884 have been sentenced so far.
But CBS News found that the payments have been sluggish, and federal taxpayers are far from being made whole because some offenders argue they are having difficulty coming up with the money. Another factor is that the court system and federal government have permitted a lenient timeframe for restitution payments.
“Those who were incited by the former president to violently attack the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power owe the taxpayers money,” said Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat and ranking member of the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of the Capitol complex.
“The money they owe is to pay for repairs for damage that President Trump inspired them to inflict,” Morelle told CBS News,
In the 41 months since the attack, federal taxpayers have footed the bill for a range of repairs to the Capitol complex and for the costs of injuries and deployment of police officers who responded. Historic windows were smashed. Police equipment was stolen. Police officers suffered injuries and continue to require medical coverage. A CBS News review of Justice Department records shows nearly 150 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6. A similar number reported suffering injuries.
Federal judges have exercised some flexibility and allowed a long time frame for offenders to make their restitution payments. In some cases, the courts have permitted them to make small monthly installment payments, and only after they are released from prison sentences. In cases reviewed by CBS News, offenders have been permitted to make payments as low as $250 a month. Some have yet to begin payments due to ongoing prison sentences.
Government document
A series of offenders have cited financial hardship. James Little, a 53-year-old truck driver from Claremont, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to unlawful picketing and parading. At his sentencing hearing in January 2024, he told the judge, “Because of the situation with Jan. 6 and the publicity about it, I have had a real hard time with my career the last three years.” He added, “So, it’s been a financial hardship for me for one thing. And I actually had to borrow the money from my mother.”
D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, demanded that offenders pay for the damage they caused.
“D.C. suffered significant damages due to the barbaric attack on January 6th, and it’s outrageous that only 16% of court-ordered restitution has been paid by the perpetrators more than three years later,” Norton said in a statement. “D.C., which bears the burdens of hosting the federal government and pays the highest per capita federal taxes in the country, must be made whole.”
Further complicating matters for the architect of the Capitol, the agency has faced obstacles in getting access to the money paid so far. A congressional aide familiar with the issue told CBS News the $437,000 in payments collected so far has been transferred to an account in the Treasury Department, as required under current law. House members will consider adding language and provisions to an upcoming government funding bill to enable the architect of the Capitol to more easily access and deposit the Jan. 6 restitution funds.
The Justice Department regularly cites the widespread damage and impact of the attack when asking for the court to order restitution at Jan. 6 sentencing hearings. Higher-level offenders, including those who were convicted of conspiracy, have been ordered to pay $2,000 each. Lower-level offenders, including those who did not engage in violence or theft, have been required to pay $500.
In a February 2022 court filing in the case of Robert Schornak, the Justice Department said reimbursements were needed from offenders to offset the “cost of damages to the Capitol Building and Grounds, the costs associated with the deployment of additional law enforcement units to the Capitol, the cost of broken or damaged law-enforcement equipment, the cost of stolen property and costs associated with bodily injuries sustained by law enforcement officers and other victims.”
The costs suffered for helping injured officers has been cited at some Jan. 6 criminal proceedings. At the March 21 sentencing of Jeffrey Sabol, the judge said the cost of leave and treatment for one Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police officer has exceeded $30,000 so far.
Sabol’s defense attorney cited likely challenges in Sabol’s ability to promptly pay the restitution in his case. At Sabol’s March 21 sentencing hearing, Judge Rudolph Contreras said, “The defendant has been detained for almost 3 years and, thus, has not been able to earn a living. He otherwise lacks assets and will have to pay restitution.”
Former President Trump has publicly pledged to pardon Jan. 6 defendants but hasn’t specified whether he would also seek to commute their restitution payments. The Justice Department has considered the completion of restitution payments as part of its criteria when deciding whether to support a defendant’s pardon application.
A person familiar with the process said that usually, defendants discuss with their probation officers the timing and amount they’re able to pay. This generally occurs during the supervised release period and the timetable for payment is set by what probation officers deem feasible.
But the Justice Department’s website says “the chance of full recovery is very low” because “[m]any defendants will not have sufficient assets to repay their victims.”
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Opioid overdose deaths have now slowed to the lowest levels nationwide since 2020, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This marks the 12th straight month of decline since a peak last year.
Around 70,655 deaths linked to opioids like heroin and fentanyl were reported for the year ending June 2024, the CDC now estimates, falling 18% from the same time in 2023.
Almost all states, except for a handful in the West from Alaska through Nevada, are now seeing a significant decrease in overdose death rates. Early data from Canada also suggests overdose deaths there might now be slowing off of a peak in 2023 too.
“While these data are cause for optimism, we must not lose sight of the fact that nearly 100,000 people are still estimated to be dying annually from drug overdose in the U.S.” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement.
Other types of drug overdoses beyond opioids are also slowing. While they make up a smaller share of overall deaths, overdoses linked to drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine are also showing signs of dropping nationwide following a peak last year.
“We are encouraged by this data, but boy, it is time to double down on the things that we know are working. It is not a time to pull back, and I feel very strongly, and our data shows, that the threat continues to evolve,” Dr. Allison Arwady, head of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told CBS News.
Arwady pointed to a long list of factors that officials hope are contributing to the decline, ranging from broader availability of the overdose reversing spray naloxone, also known as Narcan, to efforts to ease gaps in access to medications that can treat opioid use disorder.
John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Trends in what health officials call “primary prevention” have also improved in recent years — meaning fewer people using the drugs to begin with. As an example, Arwady cited CDC surveys showing a clear decline in high school students reporting that they have tried illegal drugs.
The CDC and health departments have also gotten faster at gathering and analyzing data to respond to surges in overdoses, Arwady said, often caused by new so-called “adulterants” that are mixed in. Health authorities study this by testing blood and drug samples taken in the wake of surges, in search of potential emerging drug threats.
Agency researchers are now looking closer at what could be behind gaps in communities that are still not seeing slowdowns, Arwady said.
“Unfortunately, for the most affected groups, namely Native Americans and Black American men, the death rates are not decreasing and are at the highest recorded levels,” said Volkow.
Why are drug overdose deaths declining?
In the months since CDC data first began showing real signs of a nationwide change to the deadly record wave of opioid overdose deaths, experts have floated a number of theories to explain what caused the change.
“We had been seeing the numbers go down, on the national aggregate level, since last April, and we were skeptical and kind of holding our tongues. Then we started hearing from a lot of folks on the ground, frontline providers,'” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who studies opioid overdose deaths.
Dasgupta led an analysis in September by the university’s Opioid Data Lab illustrating the nationwide scope of the downturn and probing a number of theories that might explain it.
Some explanations they dismissed as unlikely, like stepped-up law enforcement operations. Other ideas they judged as plausible, but complicated to prove, like a so-called “depletion of susceptibles” — essentially the epidemic burning itself out, as users either found ways to survive the influx of fentanyl or died — or the wider availability of naloxone.
Dasgupta said they received a flood of interest since their initial post proposing more theories, like new scanners that were deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.
There are likely a number of factors all playing a role in the shift, Dasgupta says. But he said early data from research they are wrapping up now supports one leading explanation: a shift in the illegal drug supply.
“Our hypothesis is that something has changed in the drug supply. This kind of pronounced shift, something that happens suddenly, if numbers had suddenly shot up, we would definitely be pointing to a change in the drug supply to explain it,” said Dasgupta.
Amid its downsides, xylazine‘s rise might have led to less injection drug use, they speculate. Its longer high could also be reducing the number of times people use fentanyl each day.
“We’re not in our offices celebrating. We’re still losing too many people that we love. So I just want it to be very clear that with like a hundred thousand people still dying, that’s obscenely high,” he said.