WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement officials vowed on Tuesday to accelerate a nationwide manhunt for hundreds of people who committed serious crimes during last week’s assault on the Capitol, even as new evidence surfaced that the F.B.I., police and White House were warned of potential violence that day.
Michael R. Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, called the investigation into the attack on the Capitol “unmatched” in scope and said it had already resulted in more than 170 cases involving 100,000 digital tips. He pledged that prosecutors could file charges of seditious conspiracy, murder and other serious felonies in the weeks ahead.
“The Capitol grounds outside and inside are essentially a crime scene,” Mr. Sherwin said during a news conference in Washington, adding that “we have literally thousands of potential witnesses” around the country.
His remarks came as evidence mounted that before the grim events at the Capitol — in which lawmakers and others hid from an angry, surging mob and five people died in the riot and nearby tumult — top officials in government had reason to be deeply concerned about the possibility of violence. The indications included a pair of F.B.I. reports that warned of war and blowing up a building at a Midwest statehouse, and a White House meeting where President Trump and top military officials discussed deploying the National Guard.
In one case, F.B.I. officials acknowledged that agents in Virginia warned a day earlier about a threat of violent attacks aimed at lawmakers at the Capitol. The warning, which officials said was shared with police and others in Washington, D.C., included reports of violent language, mentioned people sharing a map of tunnels and quoted from an online thread in which people said those attending the protests should be “ready for war,” according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the F.B.I. document.
In a separate report, the F.B.I.’s office in Minneapolis issued a bulletin late last month about rallies the so-called boogaloo movement planned to hold across the country on Jan. 17, law enforcement officials said. Members of the movement, an extremist ideology that seeks to bring about a second civil war to overthrow the government, discussed blowing up a building in that state’s capitol and a willingness to die for their cause, according to Yahoo News, which obtained a copy of the report.
The existence of the two reports raised questions about whether Mr. Trump, who had urged his supporters to gather in Washington on Jan. 6, or other White House officials were aware of the threats of violence in the days before the president urged his supporters at a rally to go to the Capitol to “fight” against the certification of the 2020 election.
“We will never give up. We will never concede,” Mr. Trump told thousands of his supporters just before many of them breached barriers, assaulted officers and stormed through the halls of the House and…
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