A federal judge on Tuesday granted the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the final Jan. 6 prosecution in the country, wiping out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and seven other members of the militia group.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, said he had no legal grounds to block the dismissal even though he strongly opposed it.
“This court does strongly disagree,” Mehta wrote. “But that alone is not a valid basis to deny the motion. The court must give way to the primacy of the Executive Branch in making charging decisions.”
The dismissal was entered with prejudice, meaning prosecutors cannot refile the charges.
President Trump commuted Rhodes’ 18-year prison sentence on his first day back in office in January 2025 and pardoned more than 1,500 other Jan. 6 defendants as part of a campaign promise. Tuesday’s ruling formally closed out the last case still on the books.
Mehta did not hold back in his written order. He said the dismissal “diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential power, to buckle.”
“The court cannot write a different ending,” he added.
The Justice Department had argued the dismissals were needed to shield the defendants from further “harassment.” Mehta rejected that reasoning outright.
“After all, the government has given no indication that it will recharge these Defendants, in the District or elsewhere,” he wrote. “To the contrary, it bestows upon them unearned grace by wiping their records clean.”
Rhodes was convicted at trial in 2022 on charges that he orchestrated a weeks-long plot to forcibly stop the transfer of power to President Biden, including stockpiling weapons at an Arlington, Virginia hotel in case the group needed to rush them to the Capitol. He was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years, the longest sentence handed down among the roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the riot.
After his release, Rhodes traveled to Washington and met with Republican lawmakers in the Capitol complex to lobby for the release of another Oath Keepers member who had been convicted on separate federal weapons charges and was not covered by Trump’s clemency.
Mehta’s ruling follows a similar order last month from fellow D.C. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who reluctantly dismissed the remaining convictions against four Proud Boys leaders at the Justice Department’s request.
The Jan. 6, 2021 riot left dozens of police officers injured, caused millions of dollars in property damage and was tied to five deaths in the following weeks and months, according to court records cited in earlier proceedings.
