In a major legal shift aligned with former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign pledges, the U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested a federal appeals court to dismiss the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 individuals connected to the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
When Trump took office for his second term, he moved quickly to grant clemency to hundreds of people charged or convicted over their roles in the insurrection, issuing full pardons or sentence commutations to more than 1,500 individuals on his first day in office. Though Trump issued over 1,000 full pardons to January 6 rioters, he opted only to commute the sentences of the 12 rioters—most of whom are affiliated with the far-right militia groups the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. This commutation allowed the defendants to secure early release from prison, but left their felony convictions intact on their official criminal records.
In a court filing submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia stated that “The United States has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
Among the 12 individuals seeking full expungement of their convictions is Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia. A former U.S. Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, Rhodes led a contingent of Oath Keepers members to Washington, D.C., on the day of the riot, where the group plotted to disrupt Congress’s formal certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump. Prosecutors proved during Rhodes’ 2023 trial that the group stored weapons in a Virginia hotel room across the Potomac River, and that while Rhodes never entered the Capitol building himself, he directed his followers’ actions from outside the building during the melee. He was originally sentenced to 18 years in federal prison after a jury found him guilty of seditious conspiracy, the charge of attempting to overthrow the lawful U.S. government. The D.C. Circuit has set an April 17 deadline for all parties to submit formal filings in the expungement cases. If the court grants the DOJ’s request to throw out the convictions, it will eliminate the need for the Trump administration’s DOJ to defend the original convictions in ongoing expungement proceedings.
Notably, former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique “Henry” Tarrio, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy over his role in organizing the riot and was originally sentenced to 22 years in prison, received a full pardon from Trump rather than a commutation, so he is not included in this latest request.
A successful ruling dismissing the convictions would mark a key symbolic victory for Trump, who centered a major campaign promise on supporting and pardoning rioters who participated in the insurrection aimed at overturning his 2020 election loss.