WASHINGTON (AP) — Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday after being released from prison in part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardon order for the more than 1,500 people charged in the riot.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the serious cases brought by the Justice Department during the siege that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and left more than 100 police officers injured. Rhodes was convicted of masterminding a weekslong plot that culminated in his supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep Trump in power.
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Rhodes’ visit comes the same day that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson relaunched a special committee investigating the riot, aiming to defend Trump’s actions that day and challenge the work of a bipartisan committee that investigated the siege two years ago. Johnson said Tuesday that he would not question Trump’s decision to pardon the rioters and that “we believe in redemption, we believe in second chances.”
Rhodes, who arrived at the Capitol wearing a Trump 2020 hat, said he was at the Capitol to advocate for the release of another defendant. Rhodes was among 14 Jan. 6 defendants whose sentences were commuted. He told reporters he would push Trump to grant him a full pardon.
Judges in federal court in Washington spent Wednesday dismissing a series of lawsuits against the Jan. 6 defendants that were still pending. Several judges took the opportunity, in written orders, to lament the abrupt end to the prosecution, saying Trump’s mass pardons would not change the truth about the mob’s attack on a bastion of American democracy.
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U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said evidence from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault was preserved through the “neutral lens” of riot videos, trial transcripts, jury verdicts and judicial opinions.
“These records are immutable and represent the truth, regardless of how the events of January 6 are portrayed by those charged or their allies,” she wrote.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s election interference case before it was dismissed, said the president’s pardons for hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters could not change the “tragic truth » on the attack. Chutkan added that his order dismissing charges against an Illinois man accused of shooting into the air during the riot could not “diminish the heroism of the law enforcement officers” who defended the Capitol.
“He cannot whitewash the blood, excrement and terror the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan wrote. “And he cannot repair the breach in America’s sacred tradition of peaceful transition of power.”
Chutkan and Kollar-Kotelly are among about 20 judges tasked with handling hundreds of cases stemming from the largest investigation in the history of the Justice Department. Kollar-Kotelly released her written remarks in an order dismissing the case against Dominic Box, a Georgian who was part of the first group of rioters to enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
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Other judges at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., ruled against pardoning the Capitol rioters ahead of Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, when the Republican president issued pardons, commuted prison sentences or ordered dismissal charges against the more than 1,500 Capitol riots. criminal cases.
District Judge Carl Nichols, Trump’s nominee, said in November that granting blanket pardons to the Capitol rioters would be “beyond frustrating and disappointing.” Nichols voiced his criticism during a hearing in which he agreed to postpone the trial of a Jan. 6 riot defendant until after Trump returns to the White House.
At a hearing last month, District Judge Amit Mehta said it would be “scary” if Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was pardoned for orchestrating a violent plot to keep Trump in the House White after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Rhodes was serving an 18-year prison sentence when he was released from prison this week.
Box, who was featured in the HBO documentary “Four Hours at the Capitol,” was convicted of charges including interfering with police during a civil disorder, a felony. The judge sentenced Box last year after a “bench trial,” meaning she decided the case based on facts that both sides agreed to before the trial began.
Box was scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 21. More than 130 other convicted rioters were awaiting sentencing when Trump granted their pardons.
John Banuelos, 39, of Illinois, was awaiting trial in a Washington jail when Chutkan denied charges that he climbed scaffolding outside the Capitol, pulled out what appeared to be a gun from his belt and fired two shots into the air.
“In hundreds of cases like this over the past four years, judges in this district have dispensed justice without fear or favor,” Chutkan wrote. “The historical record established by these procedures must remain, impervious to political winds, as a testament and a warning. »
Nearly 1,600 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riots. More than 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty. About 250 other people were convicted by a judge or jury after trials. More than 1,100 people have been convicted, and more than 700 have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from several days to 22 years.
More than 130 police officers were injured during the riot. At least four officers who were at the Capitol later committed suicide. And Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after confronting protesters. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes.
Kollar-Kotelly said the heroism of the officers who defended the Capitol “cannot be altered or ignored either.”
“Worthfully outnumbered, these law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect Members of Congress, their staffs, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol building – our symbol of freedom and a symbol of democratic regime around. the world,” she wrote.
President Bill Clinton nominated Kollar-Kotelly, who has served on the bench since 1997. President Barack Obama nominated Chutkan, who has served on the same court since 2014.
