A federal judge expressed confusion and surprise at the Department of Justice's defense for a convicted Jan. 6er.
In a Tuesday ruling, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, called out the DOJ's defense of its move to clear a group of convicted January 6 rioters whose sentences President Donald Trump had commuted.
Mehta granted the DOJ's request to dismiss the indictment against eight members of the Oath Keepers, including Stewart Rhodes, the group's founder, but made it clear he found the government's reasoning baffling and did so only because the law left him no choice.
The DOJ's decision to dismiss the charges against the eight Oath Keepers wasn't based on a lack of evidence or support for the convictions, according to Mehta's ruling. Instead, the DOJ wanted to spare the defendants from "harassment," which Mehta slammed as a "strange argument" because the Trump administration had given no sign it would ever recharge them.
"The government's argument relating to the Proclamation is a head-scratcher," Mehta wrote. "The President's decree expressly carves these Defendants out from the greater clemencies of pardons and dismissals it affords others. The President could have pardoned them, too, but elected not to."
He described the DOJ as bestowing "unearned grace" on the Jan. 6ers "by wiping their records clean. The harassment rationale has no place here," Mehta wrote.
Mehta also found it "surprising" that the DOJ pointed to voluminous media coverage of the Oath Keepers trial as a way of allaying concerns that the Trump administration was trying to erase history.
"The government is ordinarily of the view that accountability, not mere publicity, is what is in the public interest," Mehta wrote.
Ultimately, Mehta sounded resigned in signing off on the decision to close the criminal prosecutions against them. It was the last criminal prosecution against Jan. 6ers, reporting by Politico noted.
"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 lamented. "The court cannot write a different ending."