Jeanine Pirro Moves To Un-Convict Proud Boys For Jan 6
AYFKMRN
On Tuesday, the government filed a motion to vacate the convictions of four members of the Proud Boys militia for their prominent roles in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola were convicted by a jury of seditious conspiracy on May 4, 2023. But now, almost three years later, the Justice Department insists that the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit must retroactively eradicate their convictions to end “these years-long, Biden-era weaponized prosecutions.”
And they’re not above fudging the law to get what they want. (The DOJ is also running this same playbook in a bunch of other January 6th cases, including the Oath Keepers, some of whom were convicted of terrorism in addition to seditious conspiracy. Friend of the show Marcy Wheeler breaks down that companion motion in a post here.)
Back when the DOJ worked
In September of 2023, Judge Timothy Kelly of the US District Court for DC sentenced Nordean, a ringleader of the assault on the Capitol, to 18 years in prison. Biggs got 17 years; Rehl, 15; and Pezzola, twelve.
On his very first day back in the White House, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon to most, but not all, of the January 6th insurrectionists to end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people” and to begin “a process of national reconciliation.” Fourteen people, all of them members of the Oath Keepers militia or the Proud Boys, were exempted from the general pardon and received commutations instead — which certainly seems to suggest that their crimes were qualitatively different from other participants in the attack. But for the militia members, including Nordean, Biggs, Rehl, and Pezzola, the distinction didn’t really matter. They were immediately released along with everyone else and have been walking around free ever since.
