A federal judge who oversaw several trials for January 6 rioters has a furious response to President Donald Trump's decision pardoning 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol, Politico reported on Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee, made the remarks in a statement dismissing the charges against Dominic Box, a Georgia man convicted of felony civil disorder, who despite his arrest has maintained his conspiracy theories the 2020 election was stolen and proclaimed, “We’re going to take our country back.”
“Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”
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Kollar-Kotelly has overseen a number of other trials of January 6 defendants, often scolding them when they sought to make excuses for their behavior, and has also clashed with former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro while overseeing a legal dispute over presidential documents.
Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance had previously suggested for weeks that they would review the January 6 cases individually, implying they would only pardon those charged with nonviolent offenses. However, the pardons include hundreds of people convicted of assaulting police officers, and even commutations for paramilitary leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Last year, federal prosecutors with the Biden Justice Department put forward similar statements about the permanence of the record on January 6, telling Trump-appointed Judge Carl Nichols — who has also overseen a number of these trials — that should Trump hand down the pardons, they would not absolve any of the defendants of their underlying guilt.