Judge vacates four Proud Boys convictions

A federal judge on Friday vacated the convictions of four Proud Boys members tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, reluctantly granting a Justice Department request while sharply questioning the reasons behind it.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly signed off on dismissing the convictions of Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola after an appeals court had already approved the move and sent the case back to him. Kelly said he saw little practical alternative, even as he criticized the basis for the government’s position.

“There is little mystery about why the Government is moving to dismiss this case, or whether dismissal is in fact what the Executive seeks,” Kelly wrote in a memorandum. “President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 — whether those views are based on fact or fiction — are well known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them.”

Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were convicted in 2023 of multiple crimes, including seditious conspiracy, and received lengthy prison sentences. Pezzola was convicted of assaulting or resisting officers, robbery involving government property, obstruction and other charges. He became one of the most recognizable figures from Jan. 6 after video showed him using a riot shield to smash a Capitol window, creating what Kelly described as “the first entry point through which hundreds of rioters streamed into the building.”

The Justice Department said at the time of the convictions that Nordean and Pezzola “participated in every consequential breach at the Capitol,” leading a group of Proud Boys onto Capitol grounds as barricades were dismantled, the building was breached, police were assaulted and property was destroyed.

Trump later granted clemency to about 1,500 people charged with or convicted of participating in the Capitol attack. The order commuted the sentences of 14 people to time served but left their convictions intact. Biggs, Rehl, Nordean and Pezzola were among that group.

In April, the Justice Department moved to vacate the convictions against a dozen former members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, most of whom had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia approved dismissal of the four Proud Boys convictions in May, leaving Kelly to take the final procedural step on Friday.

“It is unclear what the Court would do with more detailed information about the Government’s reasons for seeking to dismiss,” Kelly wrote. “It is hard to see how any course other than granting the motion in full could make practical sense.” He added that denying the motion would not revive convictions the appeals court had already vacated.

Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by Trump during his first term, also used the memorandum to describe the severity of Jan. 6. He noted that the case began while Trump was still in power in the days after the attack.

“As the Court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event,” Kelly wrote. “It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured. It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government — Congress — that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’”

He concluded: “Moving forward, if this Nation’s experiment in self-government is to last another 250 years, the American people — no matter their partisan preferences — will have to act together to preserve, protect and defend that miracle through our constitutional framework.”

CBS reported that it reached out to the Justice Department for comment.