Those aren't "political prisoners", they're merely normal criminals, but there's so many of them that the justice system is having a hard time dealing with it. There are only so many federal judges and prosecutors.

A person who is in jail awaiting trial for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States is not a "political prisoner".

In many cases they would be if they subscribed to a political ideology and committed acts because of them.

In this case overthrowing is actual a protest that went out of control because of lax security. A real overthrow attempt would need to involve heavy weapons. Protesters didn't even have butter knives.

> In this case overthrowing is actual a protest

Only for some of the people involved. However, there were certainly people there attempting an actual overthrow[1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/14/oath-keepers...

They are not political prisoners. They committed federal crimes while live-streaming it and the government has presented the evidence. It just so happens that the amount of evidence they generated while committing crimes overloaded the DOJ’s capacity to collect and organize it (both prerequisites for discovery by the defendants before they can build their defense).

There have been a few defendants who have successfully challenged the speed of the trial and courts have let them off. It’s far more likely that the DOJ attorneys are simply overwhelmed with the prosecution than they are purposefully persecuting the arrested.

> According to the George Washington Program on Extremism, the FBI has arrested 940 people in connection to January 6. Of those, 43 were convicted, 481 pleaded guilty, and 382 are still waiting for trial. Most of the people waiting are out on bail. [1]

It so happens that the defendants all committed crimes on the same day, causing a backlog. It also happens that DC is a strange jurisdiction that requires coordination between federal officers of different departments (Capitol Police, Parks Police, Secret Service, etc) in a town that must get all funding passed through Congress, which is functionally broken most of the year.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/170991/cpac-january-6-riot-p...