'Still standing on the starting line' of Jan. 6 investigation, says CBS News' Scott McFarlane

The cases of many defendants from Pennsylvania are among the highest-profile

PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It has been a full year since a crowd of supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott McFarlane reported extensively on the insurrection of Jan. 6, and he has spoken with some of the people charged in the attack. He joined KYW Newsradio from Washington, D.C., to look back on some of the things he has learned about what happened that day.

He says, in some ways, we are no further along than we were a year ago.

More than 700 people have been arrested in connection with that riot, many of them accused of assaulting police officers, but hundreds of people are still wanted by the Department of Justice, including a masked person who planted pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican national committees' headquarters.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has renewed his vow to hold all Jan. 6 perpetrators accountable. Meanwhile Trump continues to attack the legitimacy of the United States House select committee charged with investigating the attack.

"What strikes me most is the paradox of this entire situation. This has become, in the last 12 months, the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history: 700 defendants already, more to come. But at the same time, we're still standing on the starting line," McFarlane said.

The committee has interviewed more than 300 witnesses. It has begun contempt-of-Congress proceedings against Mark meadows and Steve Bannon, two of Trump's former top aides. Public hearings could come as early as this spring. The committee issued a number of subpoenas and announced this week that they are looking for more information from Fox News hosts in touch with Trump's inner circle in the days before and after the riot. Yet progress is slow.

"There have only been a few dozen cases closed — mostly the lowest-level cases, people not accused of damage or assault," Mcfarlane said. "All those charged with conspiracy, assaulting police, the plotters and planners, their cases are nowhere. Only a few trial dates are set and because of COVID, trial dates are slippery at best."

McFarlane said a number of defendants from Greater Philadelphia who are charged with participating in the riot are among the most high-profile cases.

"Those are among the highest-level cases, the Philadelphia-area Proud Boys defendants. These are defendants charged with conspiracy, charged with being part of a far-right group. That makes them the highest-tier defendants. And in some cases, these are defendants who are in pretrial detention, awaiting their day in court that separates them from the large majority of defendants who are home right now and who are facing likely jail sentences that are measured in days and weeks, not months or years."

However, in some cases, federal investigators have made seemingly no headway. For example, one prevailing mystery from a year ago is the identity of a would-be pipe bomber. A year later, the Department of Justice is still looking for suspects.

"I'm sitting right next to where the pipe bomb was found 12 months ago," McFarlane said.

"I mean, they have a pair of destructive, potentially deadly pipe bombs that were sitting on Capitol Hill that would have caused immense damage but, what's more, were a distraction and a diversion for police at the worst possible time, as the riot was beginning. And 12 months later, not only do the feds not have a suspect, they're not even sure if the person who did it was a man or a woman. They don't have a suspected age range or demographic. They're seemingly nowhere on this, and they're still seeking tips."

The anniversary of the insurrection has been a day of speeches from, overwhelmingly, Democratic lawmakers, as well as the president and vice president.

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"One hundred fifty-five million of us took part in the election last year. Several thousand took it upon themselves to say that that didn't matter, and that they should, with the power of a mob, disrupt the counting of electoral votes, send members of Congress scurrying, send a signal to the world that the idea of a peaceful transfer of power isn't something that necessarily will happen in the United States," CBS News White House correspondent Steven Portnoy said. "It was a chilling thing. And that's why on this marking of the first year since it happened, members of Congress from both parties will sit in the National Statuary Hall and hear from the president."

Biden addressed his predecessor directly, laying the blame for the events of a year ago squarely at his feet. He said Trump started sowing seeds of doubt among his supporters, claiming that the election was fraudulent — months before it even took place.

"Here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principal, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country's interests, than America's interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy, or our constitution. He can't accept he lost," Biden said.

Republican leaders and lawmakers are largely staying out of the spotlight. If they have anything to say, it has been to either express opposition to the investigation, or to accuse Biden of the "brazen politicization of January 6,"  by as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., put it in a tweet.

Trump remained unimpressed by Biden's speech, sending a statement from Mar-a-Lago dismissing it as "political theater" and a "distraction."

For his part, Trump canceled a news conference he had originally planned to coincide with the Jan. 6 anniversary. It came as a relief to many Republicans, who were nervous about Trump using the occasion to continue making baseless claims of voter fraud, according to NBC News.

Trump says he still plans to conduct a rally in Arizona on Jan. 15, and he will address the Jan. 6 anniversary, again, then.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images