The Justice Department filed court papers seeking to erase seditious conspiracy convictions against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, a step that would restore gun rights and wipe felony records clean for some of the most serious participants in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
The convictions targeted organizers, not bystanders. Federal prosecutors during the Biden years argued that these weren’t opportunists who got swept up in a crowd. They were planners. The seditious conspiracy charge, rarely deployed in federal court, reflected the government’s conclusion that the attack was a coordinated effort to block the transfer of power. Judges and juries accepted that argument.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes got 18 years from federal judge Amit Mehta, who described him as “an ongoing threat and peril to this country … and to the very fabric of our democracy.” Rhodes didn’t receive a full pardon when President Donald Trump returned to the White House. His felony record stayed intact. The new DOJ filings are aimed at changing that, asking courts to vacate the convictions entirely, described in DOJ’s court filings as being sought “in the interests of justice.”
Proud Boy Zachary Rehl had drawn a 15-year sentence. He took to X after the filings dropped. “I am beyond thrilled right now,” he wrote.
The defendants are already out of prison. About a dozen people who’d received lengthy sentences for their roles in January 6 had those sentences commuted when Trump returned to office, but the felony convictions themselves weren’t touched. What’s changed now is scope. The administration isn’t just shortening punishment. It’s asking federal courts to treat the convictions as if they never happened. Records exist in federal courts’ case management system that could ultimately be wiped if judges approve the government’s request.
Ed Martin, who serves as the U.S. pardon attorney and has occupied several positions inside the Trump Justice Department, cast the filings as a win and told the January 6 defendants he wants more for them. “Hearing from J6rs and families tonight,” Martin wrote on X. “They feel respected even loved. Proud. But there is more for you to do. Keep grinding. You were directly wronged by Biden prosecutors and you deserve more.” Martin has also pushed publicly for financial restitution for former January 6 defendants.
The trial record in Rhodes’s case was damning by any standard. Prosecutors played a recording in which Rhodes said the group should’ve brought rifles to the Capitol on January 6. That evidence didn’t stop the current administration from deciding his conviction should go away.
At the trial, the jury’s verdict was unambiguous. It stood for years. Now, as LAIST reported, Trump’s Justice Department is the one asking courts to act like the prosecutions didn’t happen.
It’s a clean reversal. DOJ leadership under Trump has said openly that the department takes its direction from the president. Trump has called January 6 a “day of love” and spoken sympathetically about the rioters throughout his second term. That framing has now translated into concrete legal action, not just rhetoric.
The administration’s position creates real tension inside the federal judiciary. Judge Mehta sentenced Rhodes based on findings the court considered well-supported. He won’t be the only judge asked to weigh a government motion that contradicts those findings. Courts don’t have to grant these requests, and there’s no guarantee they will.
What’s harder to dispute is what this moment represents for the Justice Department itself. The prosecutors who built the seditious conspiracy cases against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers spent years on these investigations. They argued that January 6 wasn’t a protest that got out of hand. They argued it was a conspiracy. Now the same institutional address at Main Justice is filing papers that call those convictions a problem worth erasing.
The filings don’t resolve on their own. Judges have to sign off. Those hearings haven’t been scheduled yet, and it’s not clear every court will comply quickly or at all.
Rhodes spent time in a federal cell after Mehta handed down 18 years. He’s out now, conviction still on the books, pending whatever the courts decide next.