Washington — President Trump’s order issuing sweeping pardons to defendants convicted of crimes stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has been met with sharp condemnations from federal judges in Washington, D.C., who presided over the cases and are now dismissing charges at the request of federal prosecutors in the new administration.
The judges publicly voiced their discontent in a trio of separate orders issued Wednesday, two days after Mr. Trump granted clemency to more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and ordered any pending prosecutions to be dismissed just hours after he was sworn into office for a second term.
On the heels of Mr. Trump’s order, prosecutors in Washington have been seeking to end ongoing cases. The Justice Department said earlier this month that there were roughly 300 pending cases related to the Capitol assault. Nearly 60% of those defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement or obstructing those officers during a civil disorder, which are felonies, it said.
Citing the years spent reviewing evidence and adjudicating hundreds of cases involving defendants charged with violent and nonviolent criminal offenses, the judges rebuked efforts to downplay the events of Jan. 6.
One order issued by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who oversaw the election interference case against Mr. Trump that was dismissed after his election in November, states that “no pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.”
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor,” Chutkan wrote. “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
The dismissal of the case, she said, “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
Chutkan’s order came in the case against John Banuelos, an Illinois man who was arrested in March and faced five charges, including obstruction of law enforcement and entering a restricted building with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors said he was seen on security footage in a crowd of rioters who breached a police line on the Capitol grounds, and court documents allegedly show an image of Banuelos with what appears to be a firearm in the waistband of his pants. Security footage from the attack later appears to show him scaling scaffolding around the inaugural stage, pulling the gun from his waistband and firing two shots in the air, prosecutors said. Banuelos pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Another order from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rebuffs Mr. Trump’s claim that the Jan. 6 prosecutions represented a “grave national injustice” and that clemency would begin a “process of national reconciliation.”
“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Howell wrote, quoting Mr. Trump’s proclamation. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.”
The judge said she had presided over “scores” of cases involving defendants charged for their conduct outside and inside the Capitol building and said charges were “fully supported” by videos, photos, admissions by defendants themselves during plea hearings and the testimony of law enforcement and congressional staff who were at the Capitol.
“[T]his court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement,” Howell wrote.
She added that the cases reflect the work of prosecutors, law enforcement officers and defense attorneys “to defend our democracy and rights and preserve our long tradition of peaceful transfers of power — which, until January 6, 2021, served as a model to the world — all while affording those charged every protection guaranteed by our Constitution and the criminal justice system.”
Howell was granting the government’s request to dismiss a nine-count superseding indictment against Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs, who had earlier entered into plea deals and admitted to throwing smoke bombs at police officers and property damage and theft.
Ochs founded the Hawaii chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, according to court documents. The two entered the Capitol and smoked cigarettes in the Crypt — which is located just below the Rotunda — filings show, and DeCarlo shouted “Where’s Nancy?” a reference to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as they made their way through the building.
A third order from U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s request to toss out an indictment charging Dominic Box with seven felony and misdemeanor counts. He was found guilty of six counts last year, including civil disorder and disorderly conduct. Kollar-Kotelly wrote that Box was among the first group of rioters who entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6 and went on to overrun police officers in the Crypt.
He was set to be sentenced on Feb. 21.
Like her colleagues on the district court, Kollar-Kotelly said the events of Jan. 6 are preserved through videos, trial transcripts, jury verdicts and judicial opinions analyzing the evidence.
“Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies,” she wrote.
Dismissal of charges, pardons and commutations of sentences, the judge said, “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.”
Kollar-Kotelly also praised the Capitol Police and local law enforcement who responded to the attack at the Capitol to protect lawmakers and staff, the vice president and his family, and the Capitol building.
“For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day,” she wrote. “But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect.”
Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump had vowed to issue pardons to Jan. 6 defendants, who he has called “hostages” and political prisoners.” But the scope of the pardons came as a surprise to some, as they were “full, complete and unconditional.”
The president also commuted the sentences of 14 defendants, including high-ranking members of the far-right groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Some, like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, were serving sentences after they were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
Howell and Chutkan were nominated to the court by former President Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Kollar-Kotelly was selected by former President Bill Clinton and has served since 1997.
