Federal judge bars Oath Keepers from freely entering DC and US Capitol after commutations
WASHINGTON (CN) - A federal judge on Friday ordered the leaders of the far-right militia the Oath Keepers to obtain court permission before reentering Washington or the U.S. Capitol, a restriction that was imposed on scores of Capitol rioters after being sentenced on felony charges.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta's order comes as Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes met with GOP lawmakers in Congress on Wednesday to petition for the release of other Oath Keepers still incarcerated for separate charges stemming from investigations into their conduct on Jan. 6, 2021
President Donald Trump's executive order on Monday night granted clemency to 14 members of the Oath Keeper leadership and pardons for nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants. In the order, Trump characterized the Jan. 6 prosecutions as a "grave national injustice" and his sweeping order the beginning of a "national reconciliation."
Trump's order commuted Rhodes' 18-year sentence and those of his 13 lieutenants to time served, which opened the door to their early release from prison.
Unlike a pardon, however, the clemency did not explicitly affect their supervised release terms that follow their release, according to William Shipley, a defense attorney for Oath Keeper Roberto Minuta, one of the 14.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Shipley said that he and attorneys for the 13 other Oath Keepers were working to address whether the terms of supervised release still apply and whether the terms of their release, like a bar on returning to Washington, remain.
Rhodes was released from prison in Cumberland, Maryland late Monday night, then immediately returned to Washington on Tuesday to join a crowd of Trump supporters outside the D.C. Jail where Jan. 6 defendants awaiting sentencing were held.
While the remaining defendants had received pardons, the prison could not release them until their pending cases had been dismissed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin, a member of the Patriot Freedom Project which advocated for the release of Jan. 6 defendants, began moving to dismiss the remaining cases en masse Tuesday, including cases for defendants charged with assaulting police officers.
Federal judges at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, just blocks from the Capitol, have begrudgingly dismissed the cases, slamming the "revisionist myth" that Trump asserts in his executive order.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell decried Martin's single-paragraph dismissal motion for Frank Dahlquist, a Jan. 6 defendant charged with pepper spraying two police officers and throwing a piece of lumber at them, for which he faced a maximum of 20 years in prison and a trial scheduled to begin Jan. 27.
"No 'national injustice' occurred here, just as no outcome-derivative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election," Howell said in her order, dismissing the case with prejudice. "No 'process of national reconciliation' can begin when sore losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity."
The Barack Obama appointee warned that the mass pardons raises the "dangerous specter" of similar violent conduct in future elections.
Trump's pardon order lifted the many restrictions that come with convictions and sentences on serious felony charges, such as assaulting police and seditious conspiracy. While the commutation of the Oath Keepers sentences did not extend to their supervised release conditions, those who received pardons, like former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, had any remaining restriction lifted.
Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in planning the far-right group's violence that day, despite having been arrested two days prior for burning a Black Lives Matter flag.
Such restrictions included a bar from purchasing firearms and from reentering the District of Columbia or from entering the Capitol grounds. Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were specifically barred from using online communications, their primary method for planning their involvement in Jan. 6.
The Oath Keepers' commutations leave room for them to appeal their sentences to the D.C. Circuit and ultimately the Supreme Court. The high court has been critical of the Justice Department's Jan. 6 prosecution and the use of an obstruction felony charge that, for many defendants who were able to enter the building after the initial wave of rioters had violently pushed back police, was their only felony charge.
The Supreme Court ruled that the charge, obstruction of an official proceeding, could only apply to explicit document destruction on Jan. 6
According to Roger Parloff of Lawfare, part of Trump's reasoning to issue commutations was so the Oath Keepers could appeal their seditious conspiracy charges.
Upon receiving pardons, several Jan. 6 defendants, such as Jake Angeli, commonly referred to as the QAnon Shaman, posted online that they would test whether those restrictions had been lifted.
"Now I am gonna buy some motha fu*kin guns," Angeli posted on X, censoring himself.
Source: Courthouse News Service