{"id":894814,"date":"2026-04-15T03:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/894814\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T03:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:24:20","slug":"us-justice-department-seeks-to-throw-out-capitol-riot-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/894814\/","title":{"rendered":"US justice department seeks to throw out Capitol riot convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court approving the request to wipe out the convictions would mark a symbolic victory for Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He pledged in his presidential campaign to free those charged or convicted for participating in the riot, where protesters sought to stop Congress from certifying that he lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden. On his first day back in office, Trump issued pardons or commutations for more than 1,500 people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and several members of his group were among those whose sentence was commuted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, led a contingent of his militia members to Washington. They stashed weapons in a hotel room across the Potomac River in Virginia while participating in the melee.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rhodes did not enter the Capitol but directed his members from outside, and was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years in prison after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy, or attempting to overthrow the government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He&#8217;s among those seeking to expunge his record in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which has set a 17 April deadline to file the requests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If the court throws out the convictions, the Trump administration&#8217;s justice department will be spared from having to argue for keeping them in that process.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While former Proud Boys leader Henry &#8220;Enrique&#8221; Tarrio was also convicted for seditious conspiracy over the riot, he was pardoned. Prior his pardon, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court approving the request to wipe out the convictions would mark a symbolic victory for Trump. He&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-894814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116406587710354305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}