A federal judge dismissed seditious conspiracy charges Friday against four members of the Proud Boys who had been convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to Al Jazeera.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, granted the government's motion to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be brought again. The four defendants were Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola.
Kelly made clear in his seven-page ruling that the men had committed serious crimes. "As the Court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event. It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured," he wrote. "It was an attack on the Constitution's mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next," he added.
Despite those conclusions, Kelly wrote that his decision to dismiss the cases was rooted in the separation of government powers, not in the merits of the convictions themselves.
The dismissal is the latest step in the Trump administration's effort to unravel prosecutions stemming from January 6. Trump had previously issued pardons related to the Capitol riot.
The January 6 attack took place on the day Congress was scheduled to certify Electoral College votes confirming Trump's 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump had held a rally that day near the White House, where he told supporters "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." After the rally, a portion of the crowd marched to the Capitol and broke into the building. One rioter was shot by police. A police officer died from a stroke the following day after being beaten. Others died by suicide in the aftermath.
The convictions of Nordean, Biggs, Rehl, and Pezzola had been among the most serious to emerge from the January 6 prosecutions, with seditious conspiracy carrying substantial prison terms.
