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At an Aug. 9 plea hearing, Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell '78 of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., "questioned why U.S. prosecutors are asking Capitol riot defendants to pay only $1.5 million in restitution while American taxpayers are paying more than $500 million to cover the costs of the Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob," reports

From the article:

“I’m accustomed to the government being fairly aggressive in terms of fraud when there have been damages that accrue from a criminal act for the restitution amount,” said Howell, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor and Senate Judiciary Committee general counsel.

“Where we have Congress acting, appropriating all this money due directly to the events of January 6th, I have found the damage amount of less than $1.5 million—when all of us American taxpayers are about to foot the bill for close to half a billion dollars—a little bit surprising,” she said.

also reported on the hearing.

Howell received her A.B. with honors in philosophy in 1978 from ������̳ and her J.D. in 1983 from Columbia University School of Law. She recently returned to campus to speak to the Class of 2020 at an in-person graduation celebration.