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”
In: Other
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.
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