and that is, "WHY" did they not expect this to happen?  And to me, a very, very large part is in our subconscious and implicit biases - that these people did not expect this crowd to riot because they were White. They prematurely and incorrectly predicted that this crowd would not go nuts and to me, I think to those with the full intelligence, predicting this mess should not have been hard to predict. 

The scary thing is that so many missed signals from the past six years have been present.  Look at all the rallies that Trump has had where he has fomented violence and the crowd has went nuts (and has even erupted with bouts of violence and happily cheered it on - for example, when spectators were assaulted and others removed - the bloodthirsty crowds loved it).

And one sad thing is that we KNOW from past protests how Washington has prepared for possible violence by how the one BLM protest was staffed - recall, the rows of uniformed riot police/security on the steps of the government buildings.

Now, did I have the foresight and think such violence was going to occur? No, I did not, but I also did not have the most probable reams of intelligence that was gathered from all the Trump groups calling for the storming of the US Capitol.  I really believe when it is all said and done and all of this intelligence is released, it is going to show governmental sources had all sorts of data including electronic remarks, postings and declarations, and even human source information, that would have caused almost anyone to believe Jan 6 was going to happen.   I think it is already showing that the Trump Admin did not act on it because they were afraid it would tarnish the image of his cult followers and make them look bad.

And you are 100 percent right about the prosecution of these participants.  All of them, even Trump and the politicians that called for this need to be indicted.  However, I do not think that will happen because in my most cynical of beliefs is that these politicians feel they can't allow that to happen for a variety of reasons and this includes both Republicans AND Democrats.  To do so would be to attack their special class and they simply refuse to allow that to happen.

One final prediction - I will be very, very surprised if the Dems have the balls to subpoena their colleagues to testify - and they need to.  But I doubt they will.  The Dems will cave instead of being brave.