A federal judge has dismissed a request from another Jan. 6 defendant seeking a refund of restitution after being pardoned by President Donald Trump. This marks the fifth instance where a refund request has been declined by Washington, D.C. judges.

The recent denial came from Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who had previously issued a similar rejection. The defendant, Derek Kinnison, 42, from Lake Elsinore, faced a 33-month prison sentence for participating in the 2021 Capitol incident with members of the Three Percenter militia, as detailed by the Justice Department.

In his decision, Lamberth referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1877 ruling in Knote v. United States, which described a pardon as “an act of grace” that doesn’t return “rights or property once vested in others due to the conviction and judgment.” This reasoning was outlined in a five-page order.

Kinnison was also critiqued by Lamberth for trying to align his case with another Supreme Court case, Nelson v. Colorado, where pardoned defendants successfully reclaimed payments deposited into state accounts after their overturned convictions — due to trial errors or post-conviction issues, as per Lamberth.

“The defendant seeks to equate the reversal of the petitioners’ convictions in Nelson with the vacatur of his conviction by the D.C. Circuit,” stated Lamberth, appointed by Ronald Reagan. “However, the defendant’s conviction was not reversed; it was only vacated due to the presidential pardon. Moreover, the court’s authority to issue a refund does not depend on the vacatur of the conviction but rather on entitlement to the funds. The defendant had paid the full $2,350, which was deposited.”

Lamberth noted how the government attempted to “save the defendant’s argument” by referring to the deposit of funds in the Treasury as “erroneous.” The funds at issue here were not “erroneously received,” he concluded, noting the nation’s highest court “made clear” in Knote that while “a pardon is an act of grace,” it ultimately “does not make amends for the past.”

“The defendant’s conviction was fully ‘in force’ at the time he paid the $2,350 in assessments and restitution,” Lamberth concluded, citing Knote. “Therefore, the funds were not ‘erroneously received’ by the Treasury, and the court will not — indeed, it may not — order a refund here.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was the last person on the bench in Washington to deny a restitution and fine refund. Stacy Hager, 61, was charged and convicted in 2023 of four misdemeanors related to the Capitol breach. He requested a $570 refund in February. Federal prosecutors signed off on Hager’s request, as they did with Kinnison and other Jan. 6 defendants, saying there was “no longer any basis justifying the government’s retaining funds.” Chutkan was not convinced and cited previous rejections.

“At least three other judges in this district have denied similar motions where defendants sought reimbursement for fines and fees associated with their now pardoned criminal convictions,” the Barack Obama appointee wrote in her three-page order on July 3. “The government concurs, acknowledging that pardons generally do not ‘make amends for the past’ nor do they afford any ‘relief for what has been suffered by the offender,'” Chutkan said. “But it takes the curious position that in this ‘unusual situation,’ reimbursement is appropriate.”

Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss are the other District of Columbia judges who have turned down requests from Jan. 6 defendants in recent months.

Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, rebuffed a request from a Maryland couple on June 30 who asked for roughly $1,000 in restitution to be returned. Moss, another Obama appointee, said no to a former U.S. Marine from New Jersey; Lamberth previously denied Utah defendant John Sullivan.

Trump’s mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters earlier this year granted clemency to more than 1,500 defendants.