Sometimes a person’s reluctance can only be inferred. But U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta told the nation in the black-and-white of his opinion Tuesday that he had “reluctantly” agreed to dismiss the last eight remaining Jan. 6 cases against some of that day’s most culpable actors.
The Obama-appointed judge found himself powerless to thwart the Donald Trump-controlled Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the charges against Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and seven other members of the group.
But in his opinion making that dismissal official, Mehta took the opportunity to document what he plainly saw as the corrupt coda to the sordid affair.
“This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed,” the judge wrote.
“Today’s epilogue,” he continued, “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.”
Mehta recounted that in the weeks leading up to that day in 2021, Rhodes “had publicly declared what his members had been discussing in private meetings and through encrypted communications: their willingness to use force and violence to thwart the certification of President-elect [Joe] Biden’s electoral victory.”
The judge noted that the Oath Keepers’ actions included clashing with police officers who attempted to clear the Capitol, and that Congress was only able to certify Biden as the winner of the 2020 election thanks to “the extraordinary bravery and courage of law enforcement.”
Even then, Mehta recalled, “the Oath Keepers remained unbowed,” with Rhodes writing to his confederates that there was “still a chance Trump will act as Commander in Chief,” that Rhodes was “working with others to make that a reality” and that “Whatever Trump decides to do, you will need to be ready.”
Among the more than 1,000 people charged in connection with Jan. 6 were Oath Keepers including Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Thomas Caldwell and Edward Vallejo. They were charged with what Mehta called “the most serious offenses,” including seditious conspiracy. Except for Caldwell, all were convicted of at least one conspiracy offense. Rhodes got the highest sentence at 18 years.
On his first day back in office, in January 2025, Trump issued a proclamation ordering the dismissal of all pending Jan. 6 cases and pardoning all convicted Jan. 6 defendants, except for 14 people whose sentences he commuted to time served. The latter category included those Oath Keepers, whose cases the Trump DOJ subsequently moved to dismiss.
Although he ultimately felt he had to grant the government’s dismissal motion, Mehta highlighted that the DOJ didn’t argue that the charges were legally deficient, that the evidence was insufficient, that there was prosecutorial misconduct or that the defendants’ rights were violated.
“Remarkably, then, the government does not maintain that dismissal is in the public interest to rectify a fundamental error or a grave injustice,” the judge wrote.
He went on to call the DOJ’s lead argument for dismissal a “strange” one: to protect the defendants from harassment. Mehta deemed it an odd rationale because there’s no reason to think the government will recharge them. “To the contrary,” the judge wrote, the government “bestows upon them unearned grace by wiping their records clean.”
But he concluded that his own view of the matter “is of no moment” because he can’t deny the motion simply because he disagrees with it.
“The court must give way to the primacy of the Executive Branch in making charging decisions,” the judge wrote, adding that if the government’s view is that “the public interest is served by surrendering convictions for crimes against the country to the gloss of an enduring public record, then that is an assessment to which this court must yield.”
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