What does the Department of Justice count as an assault or injury for January 6 prosecutions?
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Executive summary
The Justice Department has treated "assault" in the January 6 prosecutions as a spectrum of conduct that ranges from physically striking officers to obstructive behavior charged as "assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees," and it routinely seeks enhanced charges when prosecutors allege use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or that an officer suffered serious bodily injury [1] [2] [3]. Department communications and outside legal analysis make clear that DOJ groups several related statutory offenses together—assault, resisting, impeding, and conspiracy to injure an officer—so the label "assault" in its tallies can include both physical blows and other forms of force or interference [4] [2].
1. What the Department actually labels "assault" in its public tallies
DOJ press releases and U.S. Attorney summaries repeatedly list defendants charged with "assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees," a category that the department has used to report hundreds of cases tied to Jan. 6 and that is regularly broken out from trespass and obstruction figures [1] [3] [5]. Those public tallies have evolved—early releases counted roughly 165 such defendants and later updates report several hundred—reflecting both continuing indictments and prosecutors’ practice of grouping assorted offenses against officers under that umbrella [1] [2] [3].
2. When the department treats a case as enhanced for weapon or serious injury
The DOJ explicitly flags and charges an "enhanced" version of officer-assault offenses when it alleges the use of a deadly or dangerous weapon or when an officer suffered serious bodily injury; monthly DOJ tallies repeatedly separate out individuals charged with those enhanced counts [1] [2] [3]. Prosecutors have brought and obtained convictions that illustrate the enhancement in practice—cases where defendants were convicted of assault with a deadly or dangerous weapon and of inflicting bodily injury, for example when a metal crowd-control barrier was treated as a weapon in sentencing announcements [6].
3. What "assault" in DOJ practice can cover beyond punches and batons
Legal and reporting analysis published about the prosecutions stresses that the department’s category includes not only classic battery-like strikes but also conduct that resisted or impeded officers during the riot, and at times conspiracy counts to injure an officer have been charged alongside individual assault counts [4] [2]. Lawfare’s review warned that DOJ statistics conflate different felony charges—meaning a headline number for "assaulting or impeding officers" may encompass some defendants whose conduct was obstructive or resistive rather than an obvious physical attack [4].
4. Scale, victims, and the department’s public framing
DOJ and FBI figures cite roughly 140 officers assaulted on Jan. 6, and the department has repeatedly underscored the scale of assaults in describing its priorities and charging decisions; periodic DOJ milestones list the running totals of defendants charged with assaults, with hundreds reported across updates and dozens specifically charged with weapon-enhanced or serious-injury counts [1] [3] [7]. The department has also pursued conspiracy charges tied to plans to injure officers and has publicized videos and BOLOs of alleged violent assaults to solicit public identification of suspects [2] [3].
5. Contested interpretations and reporting caveats
Critics and some commentators argue prosecutions have sometimes blurred protest and violence or been politicized—a line of argument amplified in political communications and opinion pieces that claim overreach—while DOJ statements emphasize prosecutorial restraint [8] [9]. Importantly, the sources reviewed document DOJ’s charging categories and statistics but do not provide a standalone statutory definition in these press materials; thus descriptions here reflect the department’s public framing and how legal observers say it groups related offenses rather than a codified one-line definition drawn from a statute in these documents [4] [1].