A federal judge on Tuesday “reluctantly” approved the Justice Department’s request to drop the last unresolved criminal case tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, bringing a formal end to prosecutions against eight Oath Keepers members accused of seditious conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta issued a sharply worded opinion that repeatedly questioned the government’s rationale for seeking dismissal. Still, he acknowledged that the court had little practical authority to reject the Justice Department’s motion, even as he underscored his view that the cases had been properly brought.
“This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed,” Mehta wrote. “Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy — the peaceful transfer of presidential power — to buckle.”
“The court cannot write a different ending,” Mehta added, concluding, “Reluctantly, the court grants the motion.”
The judge also pointed out that the Justice Department did not embrace President Donald Trump’s claim that Jan. 6 prosecutions amounted to an unlawful weaponization of federal power. In asking to dismiss the Oath Keepers case, prosecutors made no such argument, Mehta noted.
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“The government does not say that the charges were legally deficient or that the evidence presented is insufficient to sustain Defendants’ convictions,” Mehta wrote. “It confesses to no prosecutorial misconduct, nor does it assert any denial or compromise of a defendant’s rights. And it does not identify any legal error that resulted in an unfair trial or a wrongful conviction (except perhaps as to the obstruction of an official proceeding counts).”
“Remarkably, then, the government does not maintain that dismissal is in the public interest to rectify a fundamental error or a grave injustice,” the judge said.
The Oath Keepers matter had remained as the final Jan. 6 prosecution after Trump’s “Day One” pardons covered nearly every defendant charged over the Capitol riot. Those clemency actions specifically allowed Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members convicted of seditious conspiracy to be released from prison.
Earlier this year, however, the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office moved to vacate their convictions so the cases could be formally dismissed, arguing that the continued appeals fight was not in the “public interest,” without offering further elaboration.
Last month, the judge who had previously presided over the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial similarly granted DOJ’s motion to dismiss that case.
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