WASHINGTON Ashli Babbitt is dead because of Donald Trump s election lies.

Many hundreds of her fellow insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 will own criminal records for the rest of their lives, with a significant number facing prison time, also because they believed the former presidents falsehoods that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.

Trump himself, meanwhile, has thus far escaped any legal consequence for his attempt to overthrow American democracy, despite a federal law that specifically makes inciting an insurrection against the government a felony.

That is, unfortunately, not that unusual, said Danya Perry, a former federal prosecutor in New York City, citing organized crime as an example where top mobsters send underlings to do the dirty work while keeping their own hands clean enough to avoid prosecution.

Youre not the one caught in the trenches with a hammer kneecapping someone, she said. Its harder to prove that someone incited a riot than someone participated in a riot. Its one of these commonsense things that doesnt necessarily translate into something in the United States Code.

Missouri lawyer Al Watkins, who represents several Capitol rioters, including Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman who stood in a horned hat on the Senate dais, said Chansley and his other clients certainly believed they were there to help their hero, Trump.

They bought, hook line and sinker, every word that he spoke, Watkins said.

Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn testified at the first Jan. 6 select committee hearing Tuesday that the Capitol attackers clearly thought they were there at Trumps behest: I told them to just leave the Capitol, and in response they yelled, No, man, this is our house. President Trump invited us here. Were here to stop the steal.

And like a capo who continues on as before even after his minions are locked up, Trump has gone right back to staging rallies and speeches where he is spreading the same lies that incited the assault on the Capitol in the first place.

If I lost this election, I could handle it pretty easily. When they steal it from you and rig it, thats not easy. And we have to fight. We have no choice. We have to fight, he told a Phoenix audience on Saturday.

Trump is recruiting his new batch of foot soldiers for insurrection 2.0, said Glenn Kirschner , a federal prosecutor for 24 years, including six running the homicide section in Washington, D.C.

Trumps advisers did not respond to HuffPost queries. Trump himself, however, in recent public remarks has expressed no regret or remorse about his followers suffering because of his words and deeds.

To the contrary, he has instead been casting Babbitt a QAnon conspiracy theorist who was shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer as she climbed through a broken window into an anteroom through which House members were being evacuated as a sort of martyr to his cause. The person that shot Ashli Babbitt right through the head, just boom. There was no reason for that, he told reporters at a July 7 news conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course.

As for those facing criminal charges for everything from trespassing in the Capitol to brutally assaulting police officers defending the building, Trump has likened them to political prisoners. How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6? he asked rallygoers in Sarasota, Florida, on July 3.

Hes out there doing it more, Perry said. He probably feels like he has a lot of leash right now.