Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks Wednesday at the Department of Justice in Washington in advance of the one year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

WASHINGTON — Speaking a day before the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Attorney General Merrick Garland pledged Wednesday to hold to account those involved “at any level” in the riot, whether they were present during the melee or not.

In his speech at the Justice Department billed as an update for employees on the insurrection investigation, Garland pushed back against critics who have questioned his commitment to aggressively target those who may have organized or incited the riot. He called the inquiry the “largest, most complex and most resource-intensive” in the department’s history and noted that such probes take time. “We will follow the facts — not an agenda or an assumption,” he said. “The facts tell us where to go next.”

Noting that 145 rioters have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and another 20 have pleaded guilty to felonies, the attorney general said prosecutors have issued more than 5,000 subpoenas, and investigators have seized about 2,000 electronic devices, pored through 20,000 hours of video footage and evaluated 300,000 tips from the public.

“We understand that there are questions about how long the investigation will take, and about what exactly we are doing,” he said. “Our answer is, and will continue to be, the same answer we would give with respect to any ongoing investigation: as long as it takes and whatever it takes for justice to be done — consistent with the facts and the law.”

Garland did not mention former President Donald Trump by name or say who might be in prosecutors’ crosshairs beyond the 725 people already charged in the violent assault by a mob seeking to block Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

Sandra Garza, the longtime girlfriend of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died a day after battling rioters, said Trump “needs to be in prison.”

Sicknick was sprayed with a chemical substance during the insurrection and collapsed hours later. He died the next night at a local hospital. Though a medical examiner determined he had suffered two strokes and died of natural causes, the Capitol Police consider his death to have been in the line of duty.

More than 100 police officers were injured during a clash with thousands of Trump supporters, many of whom had attended a rally.