Judge 'reluctantly' grants DOJ motion to dismiss final prosecution in Jan. 6 attack
A federal judge on Tuesday "reluctantly" granted the Justice Department's move to dismiss the final remaining prosecution stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, formally vacating cases against eight members of the Oath Keepers militia group who were charged with engaging in seditious conspiracy.
In a searing opinion in which he repeatedly cast doubt on the government's stated reasons for moving for the case's dismissal, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta conceded he had essentially no power to deny the DOJ's motion while reaffirming his belief that their prosecutions were justified.
"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 said. "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 wrote, saying, "Reluctantly, the court grants the motion."
Mehta also noted that -- contrary to President Donald Trump's assertions that the DOJ's prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants were an unlawful weaponization of government power -- the Justice Department made no such argument in seeking the dismissal of the Oath Keepers case.
"The government does not say that the charges were legally deficient or that the evidence presented is insufficient to sustain Defendants' convictions," Mehta said. "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 case was the last Jan. 6 prosecution left standing after Trump's "Day One" pardons of nearly every defendant charged in connection with the Capitol attack explicitly gave members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy release from prison via clemency.
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.
