Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System

by Ryan J. Reilly

Overview

The January 6th attack is an unprecedented crime in American history. Sprawling and openly political, it can't be handled by the traditional rules and norms of law enforcement—threatening the very idea of justice and its role in society.

The attack on the Capitol building following the 2020 election was an extraordinarily large and brazen crime. Conspiracies were formed on social media in full public view, the law-breakers paraded on national television with undisguised faces, and with outgoing President Donald Trump openly cheering them on. The basic concept of law enforcement—investigators find criminals and serve justice—quickly breaks down in the face of such an event. The system has been strained by the sheer volume of criminals and the widespread perception that what they did wasn't wrong. 

A mass of online tipsters—"sedition hunters"—have mobilized, simultaneously providing the FBI with valuable intelligence and creating an ethical dilemma. Who gets to serve justice? How can law enforcement still function as a pillar of civil society? As the foundations of our government are questioned, the FBI and Department of Justice are the first responders to a crisis of democracy and law that threatens to spread, and fast.

In this work of extraordinary reportage, Ryan Reilly gets to know would-be revolutionaries, obsessive online sleuths, and FBI agents, and shines a light on a justice system that's straining to maintain order in our polarized country. From the moment the police barriers were breached on January 6th, 2021, Americans knew something had profoundly changed. Sedition Hunters is the fascinating, high-stakes story of what happens next.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541701809
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	25,559
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Ryan J. Reilly is a Justice reporter for NBC News. Previously, he was the senior justice reporter for HuffPost, where he covered the Justice Department and the FBI for more than a decade. He was 2017 Livingston Award finalist for his reporting on jail deaths, and has appeared on a variety of television programs, including The Situation Room, The Lead with Jake Tapper, Reliable Sources, All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, and American Voices with Alicia Mendendez. He lives in Washington, DC.

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/11/2023

NBC journalist Reilly debuts with a detailed and riveting report of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot that illuminates the work of a little-known cottage industry involved in the subsequent federal investigation: the “sedition hunters.” A loosely organized group of idiosyncratic individuals working “out of their home offices, from their couches, kitchen tables, bedrooms, garages,” these civilian sleuths made ingenious use of video footage, Twitter posts, and other online sources to identify participants in the siege. Over the course of the coming days and months, they would then convey the identifying information to federal authorities, becoming, according to Reilly, “the most effective tool of the FBI’s Jan. 6 investigation.” Reilly embeds the story of the sedition hunters—their methods (using everything from Facebook to dating apps), their commitment, the community they formed, even their sense of humor (they gave suspects nicknames based on their attire: “Pippi Long Scarf”; “Tricorn Traitor”)—within an almost minute-by-minute narrative of January 6. He also provides new information about some notorious participants—including the Proud Boys, Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, and Bigo Barnett, who put his feet on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk—and reveals the frustration of Justice Department and FBI investigators with their institutional inability to arrest the entire mob. The result is a crucial new window onto a historic event. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

The definitive account of the massive, open-source effort to bring January 6 perpetrators to justice from the finest reporter on the beat.—Chris Hayes, bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation

In Sedition Hunters, Ryan Reilly has delivered in real time the untold tale of the network of patriots, outside and inside government, who are bringing January 6 traitors to justice. Reilly’s compelling storytelling evokes big-screen imagery throughout.—Jonathan Allen, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

Sedition Hunters expertly tells the story of the men and women who took it upon themselves to ensure there would be consequences for those who tried to overthrow our democracy on January 6. Fast paced, thorough, and sweeping, this book makes crystal clear the extent to which the responsibility of protecting our multiracial democracy falls to each of us as citizens.—Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of American Whitelash

Already the preeminent journalist chronicling the efforts to prosecute those who carried out the January 6 Capitol attack, Reilly astutely chronicles how everyday Americans became essential sleuths in the mission of federal law enforcement to seek justice for the nation after that terrible day. This book is thrilling, fascinating, and brilliant.—Yamiche Alcindor, NBC News

Reilly proves why he’s the country’s best journalist on this beat with a compelling, crisply paced, and deeply reported portrait of the fight for justice after January 6th. Sedition Hunters seamlessly weaves together fresh details, comprehensive insider accounts, and critical historical context—punctuated by occasional moments of wry humor.—Hallie Jackson, NBC News

Reilly debuts with a detailed and riveting report of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot that illuminates the work of a little-known cottage industry involved in the subsequent federal investigation: the “sedition hunters"...A crucial new window onto a historic event.—Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

2023-07-26
An overstuffed yet fascinating study of the citizen sleuths helping chase down the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The buffoonish “QAnon Shaman” was quickly identified after the Capitol invasion mostly because he was a publicity hound. Another criminal shouted out ads for her Texas real-estate business. Many perpetrators, though, took great pains to scrub evidence of their presence and felonies—an effort that, notes NBC News justice reporter Reilly, might have been successful had it not been for the efforts of a loose-knit band of volunteer investigators whose apps and algorithms have “aided in hundreds of cases against Jan. 6 defendants,” to say nothing of hundreds of other cases that have yet to be prosecuted. As the author shows, the Department of Justice’s handling of the project has been “a clusterfuck,” hampered by inadequate technology and officials who appear to sympathize with the aims of the rioters. Agents and investigators are not allowed to use file-sharing services and have email accounts that can accept only the smallest of attachments, meaning that the “Sedition Hunters” have to provide them with thumb drives containing the videos and photographs they’ve unscrubbed, along with the case files identifying the criminals. Institutional roadblocks also include the FBI’s emphasis on foreign terrorism, even though the vast number of terrorist acts have been committed by the homegrown variety: “The federal government had spent more than two decades going after one kind of terrorism,” writes Reilly, “so it should come as no surprise that it has struggled to pivot to handling the growing threat of domestic terrorism.” Chasing down the facts via citizen crowdsourcing has proved essential to bringing Jan. 6 criminals to justice. Indeed, as one searcher said of a well-known radical whom government agents failed to identify, “He probably would’ve gotten away with it…if it weren’t for these meddling sleuths.”

A strong, fast-moving story that exposes systemic flaws while lauding the work of true American patriots.

Kirkus Reviews