US justice department seeks to throw out Capitol riot convictions

The US Department of Justice has asked a federal appeals court to throw out the convictions of 12 people who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy related to the 6 January 2021 riots.

Although President Donald Trump issued more than 1,000 pardons for those convicted for their role in the Capitol riots, he opted to commute the sentences of a dozen members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

That meant they could be released from prison, but their convictions remained on the record.

“The United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” the US Attorney’s Ofice in Washington, DC, said in a filing on Tuesday.

The court approving the request to wipe out the convictions would mark a symbolic victory for Trump.

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.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and several members of his group were among those whose sentence was commuted.

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.

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.

He’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.

If the court throws out the convictions, the Trump administration’s justice department will be spared from having to argue for keeping them in that process.

While former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was also convicted for seditious conspiracy over the riot, he was pardoned. Prior his pardon, Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison.