Jan. 6 prosecutions are over, but the fight lingers
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Trump supporters storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington DC. Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The years-long saga of prosecuting the Jan. 6 attack effectively came to an end this week, when a judge dismissed a remaining indictment against Oath Keepers members already freed by President Trump.
The big picture: Not only has Trump erased the legal consequences for many Jan. 6 defendants, but his administration has moved to rewrite the history of a deadly day — and oust federal employees who worked on related cases.
Driving the news: Judges in recent weeks disposed of the final two cases accusing leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers of orchestrating a plot to undermine the transfer of power. But the jurists were candid in saying that didn't mean they agreed with the administration.
- Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged the gravity of his Tuesday order granting the DOJ's request to toss the Oath Keepers' indictment. "This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6," he wrote. "That book is now closed."
- He wrote of an epilogue that diminished what happened that day and denigrated the work of prosecutors and law enforcement. But he concluded, "The court cannot write a different ending."
- A DOJ spokesperson told Axios in a statement that they "respect" Mehta's decision but "disagree with the characterization of our reasoning."
Zoom out: U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, similarly dismissed the remaining Proud Boys' case but recognized Jan. 6 "was an attack on the Constitution's mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next."
What they're saying: But even if the prosecutions have ended, they've created an in-depth chronicle of that day and what led to it, says Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and a former federal prosecutor who resigned from the DOJ following the Jan. 6 pardons.
- "This was this was always a risk, and why I think the prosecutions were so important," Ballou tells Axios. "Because it's a historical record that, try as he might, Donald Trump is not successfully erasing."
Catch up quick: In those high-profile cases, members of both groups were found guilty of seditious conspiracy.
- Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, who led the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases. Stewart Rhodes, of Oath Keepers infamy, was sentenced to 18 years.
- But Tarrio was pardoned in Trump's day-one clemency sweep, while other members of the far-right groups had their sentences cut short with commutations. Earlier this year, the DOJ asked an appeals court to vacate the remaining convictions.
Between the lines: The end of the cases comes as no great surprise under an administration that's taken a radically different approach to Jan. 6 than its predecessors.
- Even with his $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund defunct, the president has continued to suggest those involved in the riot deserve payouts.
- The controversy has also spilled out into the way Trump's judicial nominees have talked about the riot after years of prosecutions and Capitol Hill probes, sparking Democratic ire and warnings from former DOJ attorneys who prosecuted Jan. 6 cases.
- "Anybody that has interacted with the reality of January six knows that it was an attack on democracy," Ballou says.
Go deeper: Jan. 6 officers sue over Trump's $1.8B fund they call a "corrupt sham"
