By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday granted the U.S. Justice Department's request to dismiss cases against members of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia who took part in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a court filing.
The ruling from Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta tosses out convictions of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and other members of the group who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting to stop
the transfer of power after President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
All the defendants had already been freed from prison as part of Trump's sweeping move to pardon nearly all 1,600 people charged in the attack and commute the prison sentences of the remaining defendants.
Mehta, who presided over the two seditious conspiracy trials in 2022 and 2023, wrote in his ruling that he strongly disagreed with the Trump Justice Department's decision, but concluded prosecutors had the authority to drop the cases.
"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," Mehta wrote. "The court cannot write a different ending."
The Justice Department also moved to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions of members of the far-right Proud Boys group for their role in the Capitol attack. Members of a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to stop congressional certification of Trump's defeat.
The eight defendants whose cases were dismissed on Tuesday were among the few January 6 defendants whom Trump did not fully pardon, meaning their convictions would have stood without the Justice Department's decision to intervene.
Prosecutors argued dismissal was appropriate given Trump's order to drop all pending January 6 cases on the first day of his second term. Trump has said that January 6 defendants were mistreated and that their prosecutions were an abuse of the legal system, though the Justice Department did not make those arguments in seeking dismissal of the case.
Several members of the Oath Keepers had appealed their convictions.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward, Ismail Shakil and Jasper Ward; Editing by Michelle Nichols and Lisa Shumaker)
