A few days after Donald Trump whined that the Pope is “weak on CRIME,” Trump’s Justice Department on Tuesday filed paperwork asking the federal appeals court for the DC Circuit to vacate the convictions of members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers terrorist groups for seditious conspiracy and other federal treason crimes.
The move will wipe away the criminal convictions of the handful of Trump-loving seditionists whose sentences were commuted by Trump right after he took office, but who weren’t among the more than 1,500 January 6 criminals who received full pardons. Trump instead commuted the sentences of the 14 people convicted of seditious conspiracy to time served, letting them out of prison, but leaving the convictions in place.
Once the requests from “US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro” — a phrase that still makes us snort-laugh in disbelief — are approved, they’ll erase the only remaining criminal convictions of people involved in the January 6 coup attempt/tourist visit. The requests will almost certainly be approved, because as the Washington Post lawsplains (gift link), “prosecutors have broad discretion to pursue or drop criminal charges, even after defendants have been convicted.” All perfectly legal!
Because they’ll no longer have felony convictions against them, they’ll again be free to own guns. Lots and lots of guns, so they can be men again. Some of those poor persecuted lambs are also suing the Capitol and DC Metro Police for having defended the Capitol, so the inevitable settlement with the DOJ may bankroll the rebuilding of rightwing militia arsenals.
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Among those who’ll benefit are Oath Keepers founder and head Oaf Elmer Stewart Rhodes as well as other Oafs and Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. They include Dominic Pezzola, the Proud Boy who was first to breach the Capitol by smashing a window with a riot shield taken from a cop. The other 10 creeps who’ll have their January 6 convictions vacated are Joseph Biggs, Joseph Hackett, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Eduardo Vallejo, and Jessica Watkins.
Trump fully pardoned Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio on his first day in office, even though Tarrio was given the longest prison sentence — 22 years — of any of the seditionists.
In the court filings, Pirro didn’t attempt to explain why the dozen seditionists deserve to have all their January 6 crimes erased, because she didn’t have to. She simply said that the “United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.” Details about what they’d been convicted of would only confuse matters, after all.
The Post points out that there was some very convenient timing here, too
The Justice Department’s request came one day after Tarrio and Rehl had publicly accused Pirro and her office of fighting their efforts to overturn the convictions.
“We shouldn’t have to fight Jeanine Pirro for the truth that everybody already knows,” they wrote in an essay published by Gateway Pundit, a website popular among conservatives. “The President … knows these cases were a farce. Yet his own DOJ is still counter-signaling him.”
Donald Trump does not read, for the most part, but he’s very fond of summaries of shit published by the Stupidest Site on the Internet, so we really hope some enterprising reporters look into whether that particular whine from the Proud Boys had anything to do with Pirro’s actions.
We’ll also point out that Rhodes’s estranged family has long dreaded the possibility that he’ll again have access to firearms, fearing that he will come after them for revenge. Rhodes’s lawyers denied that there’s any reason for them to worry that he has a mental “kill list” of those he believes have wronged him, and note that he hasn’t made any explicit threats against them, so we’re sure that’s a big relief.
As Judge Amit Mehta noted at Rhodes’s sentencing, there’s every reason to consider Rhodes, based on his own statements about the need to pursue armed insurrection against the government, presents “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.”
Then again, federal judges who rule against Donald Trump aren’t legitimate anyway, so it’s probably no big deal that a bunch of the top leaders of his last coup attempt will now be able to buy all the guns they want in advance of the 2026 midterms.
[NPR / WaPo (gift link) / Emptywheel]
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“United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
That’s a fucking lie.
The judges should force the DOJ lawyers to show up and explain how it’s “in the interests of justice,” exactly.
So, Orange Fuckface is trying to get the band back together for midterms...