President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to pardon Jan. 6 protesters have done little to slow the FBI and federal prosecutors, who four years after the fateful day continue to make arrests and pursue hefty sentences against those who breached the Capitol grounds.

Authorities made four more arrests this week, filing the new cases just days before Mr. Trump is sworn into office.

The FBI charged men from Virginia, California, Ohio and Arkansas with assaulting law enforcement officers based on scuffles with police manning barricades while the Electoral College votes were counted.

And lawyers said the U.S. attorney’s office has been playing legal hardball, opposing requests to delay proceedings until the Trump administration takes root.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has called the Jan. 6 cases one of the most resource-intensive efforts his department has ever undertaken, with nearly 1,600 people charged and 1,100 of the cases completed, resulting in jail time in about 60% of those.

“You pursued accountability for that attack on our democracy wherever it led — guided only by your commitment to follow the facts and the law,” Mr. Garland told his employees in his farewell address to them. “I am proud of the work you have done.”

But it came with tradeoffs — ones that critics argue far outweigh the good Mr. Garland believes to have been done.

Defenders of the protesters say that while the events of Jan. 6 were outrageous, the near-blanket treatment of those at the Capitol that day as domestic terrorists is also corrosive.

That includes Christopher Macchiaroli, a lawyer who was friendly with some of the police on duty that day and initially was reluctant to take Jan. 6 cases but eventually got involved in one as a favor to a former colleague. He was shocked at what he saw from a Justice Department he once served as a prosecutor.

He said the U.S. attorney’s office generally used to only bring charges of assaulting an officer when there was an actual physical injury. But in the Jan. 6 cases, every tussle was charged as assaulting or impeding an officer.

He said the FBI deployed SWAT teams to arrest and shackle people with no criminal records and no history of violence. And prosecutors made winning jail time a goal of nearly every case, even changing their prosecution strategy at one point to demand defendants plead guilty to two misdemeanors to ensure some time behind bars.

“There was no proportionality to DOJ’s approach relating to January 6 protestors, labeling them all as insurrectionists, when some were grandparents or couples who walked in and out and took pictures and were in the Capitol for just a few minutes,” Mr. Macchiaroli told The Washington Times.

Mr. Garland even roped in his department’s counterterrorism division and recruited volunteer lawyers from other divisions and other U.S. attorney’s offices.

John Pierce, a prominent lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, said that forced the department to take its eye off other pressing needs.

“The thing that’s really sickening about it is these FBI agents, these prosecutors, were taken off of human trafficking cases and child pornography cases and real crimes the FBI should be investigating [in order] to chase around MAGA grandmothers,” Mr. Pierce said.

In the end, Mr. Garland’s team failed to bag their big prize — Mr. Trump.

If anything, Mr. Pierce said, it all backfired as the “scorched-earth” approach angered voters and helped fuel Mr. Trump’s stunning election victory in November.

“Obviously, the change in administration will bring closure to this event in our history, and DOJ and FBI can now appropriately focus its resources on the tens of thousands of violent criminals in this country,” Mr. Macchiaroli said.

Since the Nov. 5 election, authorities have made 19 new cases against Jan. 6 defendants.

Among the recent ones is Nathan Bordeaux, a Virginia man whom authorities say was part of a mob fighting with officers outside the Capitol who then breached the building and was near the spot where a rioter was shot and killed.

The FBI said Mr. Bordeaux rushed outside to announce the shooting to other protesters. He then threw a water bottle at two officers.

Court documents don’t reveal why it took authorities four years to make an arrest.

Another recent case involves Frank Peter Molinari Girogi Jr., a California man the FBI says charged at and struck a Capitol Police officer and later, during a pushing match with officers, grabbed an officer by the neck, pulling them to the ground.

The FBI said it got tips in June 2023 and September 2024 identifying Mr. Giorgi from images taken from video of the riot.

The FBI referred an inquiry for this story to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which declined to comment on its recent prosecution decisions.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney who oversaw most of the prosecutions, defended his work in an interview with The Associated Press.

“This is the most recorded crime in the history of the country,” he said.

“The evidence is just overwhelming in these cases. As someone who is a career prosecutor, it’s rare that you have this much evidence, which is why you’re seeing these outcomes,” said Mr. Graves, who stepped down from his post on Thursday, just ahead of Mr. Trump’s ascendance.

Mr. Pierce challenged Mr. Graves’ logic, saying there are other reasons the cases are resulting in convictions and lengthy sentences.

For one thing, he said, the feds are still trickling out evidence four years after the action. That includes facts that could have helped exonerate or at least mitigate culpability for some defendants.

He pointed to an inspector general’s report last month that belatedly acknowledged 17 FBI informants breached the Capitol grounds as part of the protests, and four of them entered the building itself.

None of them has been prosecuted.

“That lends credence to the selective vindictive prosecution argument,” Mr. Pierce said.

While Mr. Trump has been certain in promising pardons, his team has been coy about exactly who is likely to be covered.

Pam Bondi, Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee, said at her Senate confirmation hearing that if she’s asked to review potential pardons for the next president, she’ll evaluate them on a “case-by-case” basis.

And Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggested in a recent interview that the new president won’t grant them to people who were violent toward police officers.

Mr. Pierce said that’s problematic.

He said the Justice Department’s police assault prosecutions covered protesters who merely jostled officers or, in some cases, were attempting to protect elderly protesters from being struck by a police baton.

“We need to move on from this. The easiest way to move on is to pardon everybody,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s political opponents are furious at the possibility of pardons. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called the idea “shameful” and “utterly outrageous.”

“It is wrong. It is reckless. And it would be an insult to the memories of those who died in connection to that day,” he said.

The Brennan Center for Justice said there’s no doubt Mr. Trump has the power, but said it would be wrong to use it this way.

“By advertising his willingness to pardon the people who supported him rather than the Constitution, Trump is sending a message to the people he is counting on to support him this go-round: If they protect him, he will take care of them. It’s a message fit for a would-be authoritarian,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney, wrote for the Brennan Center.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.