{"id":16921,"date":"2026-04-15T04:01:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T04:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/16921\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T04:01:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T04:01:27","slug":"justice-department-asks-to-toss-convictions-of-oath-keepers-proud-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/16921\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department asks to toss convictions of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court<\/a> to throw out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders who were sentenced to prison terms for leading members of the far-right extremist groups in attacking the U.S. Capitol<\/a> to keep President Donald Trump in office over five years ago.<\/p>\n

Trump commuted the prison sentences<\/a> of several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders last January in a sweeping act of clemency<\/a> for all 1,500-plus defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.<\/p>\n

The request by the Justice Department would go a step further and erase all the convictions for extremist group leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes<\/a>, who didn\u2019t receive pardons last January.<\/p>\n

The move to abandon the convictions represented a stunning reversal from the Biden administration, which hailed the guilty verdicts as a crucial victory in its bid to hold accountable those responsible for what prosecutors described as an attack on the heart of American democracy. It\u2019s part of the Trump administration\u2019s continued efforts to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack and downplay the violence carried out by the mob of Trump supporters that left more than 100 police officers injured.<\/p>\n

In court filings, prosecutors asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the convictions so that the government can permanently dismiss the indictments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s motion to vacate in this case is consistent with its practice of moving the Supreme Court to vacate convictions in cases where the government has decided in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of a criminal case is in the interests of justice \u2014 motions that the Supreme Court routinely grants,\u201d prosecutors wrote in a court filing signed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.<\/p>\n

Juries in Washington, D.C., convicted the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders of orchestrating violent plots<\/a> to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump\u2019s 2020 election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

The department\u2019s dismissal request also includes the convictions of Oath Keepers members Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson and Jessica Watkins and Proud Boys members Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola.<\/p>\n

Other extremist group members, including former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, received pardons from Trump on the first day of his second term in the White House.<\/p>\n

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he and several lieutenants were convicted in one of the most consequential cases arising from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Rhodes and his followers stockpiled guns for possible use by \u201cquick reaction force\u201d teams at a Virginia hotel, but they never deployed the weapons.<\/p>\n

Nordean\u2019s attorney, Nicholas Smith, said they are grateful to the Justice Department for its \u201cwise decision\u201d in seeking dismissal of the convictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want a precedent that says that any physical confrontation between protesters and law enforcement means a crime akin to treason, such as seditious conspiracy,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone<\/a>, who was dragged into the mob and suffered a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun<\/a>, was disappointed but not surprised by the latest milestone in the dismantling of Capitol riot prosecutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would remind Americans that these were traitors to this country,\u201d Fanone said. \u201cThey planned, incited and carried out an insurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to throw out the seditious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10518,56,1790,10521,38,10525,10519,50,115,8,3913,10523,478,10516,10526,10517,7094,166,10524,9,10520,7095,67,10515,10514,7,2631,54,69,10522],"class_list":{"0":"post-16921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-2021-united-states-capitol-riot","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-district-of-columbia","11":"tag-dominic-pezzola","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-enrique-tarrio","14":"tag-ethan-nordean","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-government-and-politics","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-jeanine-pirro","19":"tag-jessica-watkins","20":"tag-joe-biden","21":"tag-joseph-biggs","22":"tag-kelly-meggs","23":"tag-kenneth-harrelson","24":"tag-law-and-order","25":"tag-law-enforcement","26":"tag-michael-fanone","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-nicholas-smith","29":"tag-pardons-and-commutations","30":"tag-politics","31":"tag-proud-boys","32":"tag-stewart-rhodes","33":"tag-top-stories","34":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","35":"tag-u-s-news","36":"tag-washington-news","37":"tag-zachary-rehl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}