A federal judge on Friday dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against several Proud Boys members, granting a request from the Trump administration and undoing one of the Biden administration’s most celebrated victories against those who allegedly inspired the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach.
Background
US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, begrudgingly agreed to drop the case against the four members, saying he “lacks the authority to compel the Executive to pursue a prosecution, full stop.” The Trump administration had sought to treat this case essentially the same way it has all January 6 cases, without regard for the seriousness of the conduct at issue or even whether the case was initiated after President Biden took office or, like this one, while President Trump was still in power.
The US district judge who sits in Washington, DC, said in his order that the Trump administration sought to abandon this prosecution, even after the Government secured convictions for serious crimes relating to the January 6 protests. The judge noted that the decisions to issue the Executive Order and to abandon this prosecution are solely the Executive’s, and that no one should mistake the Court’s granting of the Government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions.
Reaction
Zachary Rehl, one of the Proud Boys members, celebrated the dismissal in a post on X, saying, “Finally, it’s all over! January 6th can now be a thing of the past for me!” Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the group who had also been pardoned by Trump, was also quick to boast on X Friday night: “Justice is served! Proud Boys don’t lose. We win. This is our victory.”
President Trump has long lambasted the January 6 prosecutions as an injustice against his supporters, even referring to those in jail as “hostages.” The president has repeatedly called January 6, 2021, “a day of love and peace” and claimed his supporters posed “zero threat.” His comments are contradicted by hundreds of video clips of Trump supporters engaging in violent behavior during the Capitol breach.
Judge Kelly, calling the insurrection “a perilous event,” said it was “an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured. It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government—Congress—that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’”
Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.
