Non-political. Simply curious from a legal perspective. By what criteria it is decided, “Yes, charge this person” and “No, do not charge this person”
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It depends whether or not they did something that is legally actionable that the prosecutors feel confident they could get a conviction on.
So people merely swept along by the crowd who did not themselves do anything violent largely have been spared. While people that were caught on camera doing things like assaulting police officers or destroying public property have been prosecuted.
weather what that *specific, identifiable person* can be proven to have done would, in the eyes of a bunch of random citizens, be a crime *worthy* of prosecuting.
going to a rally? not a crime. Going into the White House? likely trespass, but arguably unlikely to get a conviction on given the amount of possible mitigating circumstances (following the crowd, believed they were allowed to be in the areas they were seen in, unable to fight the flow of people, etc).
But seen destroying stuff? caught on camera in the white house, chanting that they wanted to string up mike pence for not breaking the law in favour of daddy trump? those are crimes you can get a conviction on, and if you can prove that Mr Bloggs of California was the person seen, you can throw them in jail.
This is up to the district attorney. Depending on various thing they might even need a grand jury decide. Whenever a police agency have collected enough evidence against someone they will send this evidence to the DA. The DA then goes though this evidence and try to figure out if they have enough that they might win the trial and what charges to go for. The reason a lot of these cases took so long before some people got charged with anything was because the DA found that they had enough evidence for some minor charges but it looked like the person was more involved and that there would be more evidence against them once more got analyzed.
For charges that require a grand jury the DA have to present the evidence to this jury of peers and they get to decide what charges should be brought forth. In the cases where people who were part of the insurrection have not been charged yet it is often because there are not enough evidence. You need a lot of evidence for criminal trials as there needs to be no reasonable doubt that the person did it. For example if there is pictures of someone in the clouds outside the Congress, and they said they went inside, even posting pictures from inside the Congress during the storming there is still not enough evidence to go to trail with. It is possible that they never actually went inside the Congress and just stood outside, they might have lied when they said they went inside and they could re post someone else’s photos or told someone to take their phone inside to take pictures. As long as there is some doubt the jury have to acquit.
Like most criminal cases, a big factor is what kind of evidence do they have, and do the district attorney/prosecutors think they have enough solid evidence that they’ve got a decent shot at getting a conviction.
There are certainly other factors. Even if you don’t think your evidence is water-tight, if the crime is significant enough, it still might make sense to pursue it and roll the dice with bringing a case.
In regards to the Capitol Riots, there’s a ton of potential cases to be brought, so they seem to have focused more on cases where they have evidence that specific individuals did more than just wander around the area, and have prioritized charging people who actively destroyed property and/or committed violence.
But it was a big event with a ton of people and a ton of evidence, so it’s all pretty complicated and there’s no single rule/guideline that explains everything.
DC is a weird legal place, because it is technically a federal district that is governed by congress. So, the US Attorney for DC is dual-purpose there and also acts as the local district attorney. He is responsible for determining who gets prosecuted.
As with all legal cases, you have to be able to prove your case to a jury. So, if the US Attorney doesn’t feel like they have enough evidence to win the case, they would likely decide not to bother charging the person as it would be a waste of resources to take the case to court.
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