DCMJ’s “Congressional Joint Session” ended shortly after 2 p.m., four hours early and long before the group had given away all their free joints.

Capitol Police confiscated more than 1,000 joints from activists and arrested eight activists who were giving them away to Hill staffers over the course of Thursday afternoon.

“Our plan was to lawfully give away marijuana,” says DCMJ co-founder Nikolas Schiller. “We were not planning on getting arrested today—we were following the law we wrote.”

The group, which spearheaded the passage of Initiative 71 (the ballot initiative that legalized marijuana in the District), announced it would be passing out two joints apiece to Congressional staffers beginning at noon on 4/20 “to show that there’s a community in this country who loves this plant and uses it,” DCMJ co-founder Adam Eidinger told DCist last week. The 1,227 joints they rolled represented HR 1227, a bill introduced this term that would end the federal prohibition on marijuana.

Schiller says that DCMJ chose the location for the giveaway, the corner of 1st St NE and Constitution Ave NE, based on a Washington Post map that delineates between federal and District land. While giving away up to an ounce of marijuana is legal under D.C. law, doing so on federal grounds is not.

U.S. Capitol Police say in a statement that officers began arresting people at around 12:15 p.m., “after witnessing them distributing marijuana in public view to passersby at First and Constitution Avenue, NE,” citing federal law, under which it is illegal to possess marijuana.

Three of the arrestees were charged with possession with intent to distribute, and the five others were charged with possession, all under federal law.

DCMJ has hosted other weed giveaways, including one on Inauguration Day, that drew hours-long lines and did not result in any arrests despite flagrant use on public land.

Schiller contends that the arrests were political, because all of the people arrested—including Eidinger—will have stay-away orders from the Capitol, preventing them from participating in Monday’s planned civil disobedience, when activists plan to toke up on the Capitol steps at “high noon.”

Today’s arrests aren’t deterring DCMJ from their plans on Monday. “We’re still game-on,” says Schiller. “You expect there might be even more people after what happened today.”

He says that before Capitol Police confiscated the cannabis, DCMJ had handed out two joints to about 100 Congressional employees. As of 3:20 p.m., “We still have staffers showing up saying ‘What happened?'” says Schiller.

This story has been updated.