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Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is still trying to expunge the last traces of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
What happened? On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to vacate seditious conspiracy and other convictions against 12 defendants involved in the January 6 riot, where Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in support of his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, injuring about 140 police officers in the process.
The request is the first step in a process that will likely lead to January 6-related charges being wiped away for the defendants.
Who are the rioters? All 12 are members of one of two far-right militia groups: the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And all 12, along with two other rioters, had their sentences commuted by Trump on his first day back in office. Trump pardoned the more than 1,500 other January 6 defendants outright.
What’s the context? Trump and his administration have long attempted to rewrite the history of the attack, painting its perpetrators as wrongfully prosecuted victims. On the five-year anniversary of the raid earlier this year, his White House argued that “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection” and accused police of having “escalate[d] tensions” with rioters. (Neither is true.)
Why does this matter? Tuesday’s DOJ request doesn’t change anything very concrete for the defendants who stand to have their convictions vacated, as they were already not facing further prison time.
But it shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Some of the defendants poised to have their convictions vacated — “in the interests of justice,” according to Trump’s DOJ — advocated for violence above and beyond even what happened on January 6.
One of them, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, said shortly after the attack that “we should have brought rifles [on January 6]. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi from the lamppost.”
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
