No one is above the law in this country

Exceptions may apply.

A third of the 700 people arrested by the Justice Department for attacking the U.S. Capitol building have been hit with a peculiar federal “witness tampering” law, according to researchers at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Those 240 insurrectionists have been charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding, a never-before-seen tactic by prosecutors for an equally unprecedented event.

So far, 13 have pleaded guilty, and three of those have already been sentenced. But if hundreds of people face prison time for interrupting Congress while it was certifying the 2020 election results, what happens to the president who ordered them to march there?

  Daily Beast

And, let's not forget, told them he would be going with them, which of course he did not do.

“The DOJ and the [special House Jan. 6] committee are building a pyramid of guilt to get to the top. The more people who plead guilty, the more the top of the pyramid begins to take shape,” said Joshua E. Kastenberg, a professor at University of New Mexico’s law school.

[...]

[T]he committee can’t, on its own, charge anyone with a crime. But its findings can certainly result in Congress asking the Justice Department to pursue a case against the former president.

[...]

It might seem odd for a federal law against witness tampering to be used this way, but the statute includes a provision that makes it a crime for anyone who “corruptly… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding,” or tries to do so.

As insurrection cases make their way through federal courts in the District of Columbia, judges are increasingly allowing prosecutors to use it.

Ronald Sandlin and Nathaniel DeGrave, accused rioters who were caught in Las Vegas, recently tried to stop the DOJ from using it against them. That effort was promptly cut short by U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, a Trump appointee, when she issued an opinion on Dec. 10 that noted how Sandlin recorded a livestream shortly before the attack in which he said, “freedom is paid for with blood” and “there is going to be violence.”

[...]

“One of the most commonly used defenses by January 6 defense attorneys is that their client could not have been intentionally obstructing the proceeding because they had no idea it was an official proceeding,” Lewis said.

But that defense has an obvious weakness: rioters were expressly there to “stop the steal” by preventing Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.

“They were there to interfere with the process. They may not have been there to commit acts of violence or commit an insurrection. But they were absolutely there to do exactly what this statute covers,” Kastenberg told The Daily Beast.

The more defendants plead guilty to this charge, the more they establish it as the norm.

[...]

“This is how you prosecute the mob. You don’t start at the top,” said Vermont Law School professor Jared Carter.

This was certainly a mob, and they certainly had their mob boss. But don't expect him to be charged with anything.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.