Portland, Oregon/United States-August 22, 2020: Conservative people from the far-right movement, Proud Boys, and Boogaloo join for a "Back the Blue" rally. (Photo credit: Robert P. Alvarez / Shutterstock)
A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump agreed on Friday to dismiss the Justice Department's case against four Proud Boys tied to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he took pains to separate the ruling from his own view of it.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted the government's unopposed motion to end the prosecution of Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola with prejudice, after an appeals court had already vacated their convictions. Nordean, Biggs, and Rehl had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, while Pezzola was acquitted of that charge but convicted of others. Kelly repeatedly stressed these were "serious crimes," and that the case was being wiped away "without regard for the seriousness of the conduct at issue."
He was blunt that his hands were tied.
"Denying the motion would not somehow revive the convictions" that the appeals court vacated, Kelly wrote, adding that the court "lacks the authority to compel the Executive to pursue a prosecution, full stop." The dismissal, he noted, was "mandated by the Executive Order" Trump signed on his first day back in office, the same order under which the Justice Department moved to vacate the convictions in April.
He then delivered a strong assessment.
"No one should mistake the Court's granting of the Government's motion for its agreement with those decisions," Kelly wrote.
He also took a pointed swipe at the president's account of the riot, referencing "President Trump's views about the prosecution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 — whether those views are based on fact or fiction."
Kelly singled out Pezzola for breaking the Capitol window that created "the first entry point through which hundreds of rioters streamed into the building." He closed with a civics warning, calling Jan. 6 "a perilous event" and an attack on "the Constitution's mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power."
If this nation's "experiment in self-government is to last another 250 years," Kelly wrote, Americans "no matter their partisan preferences" must act together to preserve it. Some of the freed defendants were eyeing payouts from a Trump fund set up for those he viewed as wronged by the prosecutions. That fund has since been scrapped, according to Trump's own administration, though the president has since suggested he might revive it.