The Justice Department Is Struggling To Bring Capitol Riot Cases To Trial: Here's Why

Early one morning in January, Suzanne Ianni peered through her window to discover two black SUVs and a police cruiser parked in front of her house. All she could think was: "Aw, they're here."

While Ianni had been expecting federal agents for days, she wasn't fully prepared for their arrival or for the moment when they said, "You're under arrest." "And I just sat down in a chair, I was trying to catch my breath," she told NPR. "And they're like, OK just relax," she said. "It's only a misdemeanor."

Ianni, a 59-year-old mother of three, is one of the more than 570 people charged as being part of the mob that overran the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. She stands accused of disorderly conduct and being inside a federal building illegally.

The morning the FBI came, she recalls her husband handing her a coat and some shoes and then when the agents told him "no laces," Ianni couldn't help but laugh. "I'm like OK, I'm not going to hang myself over trespassing, you know."

The attack on the Capitol is something most Americans watched on TV or Facebook or Twitter, from the police battered in hand-to-hand combat on the stairs, to the fatal shooting of a woman just outside the House chamber.

In the weeks afterward, there was a general sense that the Jan. 6 cases would be of the slam-dunk variety.