Trump DOJ asks to erase January 6 conspiracy convictions: What to know

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Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration continues to be attempting to expunge the final traces of the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.

What occurred? On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s Justice Division requested a federal appeals court docket to vacate seditious conspiracy and different convictions in opposition to 12 defendants concerned within the January 6 riot, the place Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in help of his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, injuring about 140 police officers within the course of.

The request is step one in a course of that may possible result in January 6-related expenses being wiped away for the defendants.

Who're the rioters? All 12 are members of one among two far-right militia teams: the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. And all 12, together with two different rioters, had their sentences commuted by Trump on his first day again in workplace. Trump pardoned the greater than 1,500 different January 6 defendants outright.

What’s the context? Trump and his administration have lengthy tried to rewrite the historical past of the assault, portray its perpetrators as wrongfully prosecuted victims. On the five-year anniversary of the raid earlier this yr, his White House argued that “it was the Democrats who staged the true riot” and accused police of getting “escalate[d] tensions” with rioters. (Neither is true.)

Why does this matter? Tuesday’s DOJ request doesn’t change something very concrete for the defendants who stand to have their convictions vacated, as they had been already not going through additional jail time.

However it shouldn’t be ignored, both. Among the defendants poised to have their convictions vacated — “within the pursuits of justice,” based on Trump’s DOJ — advocated for violence above and past even what occurred on January 6.

Considered one of them, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, mentioned shortly after the assault that “we should always have introduced rifles [on January 6]. We may have mounted it proper then and there. I’d cling [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi from the lamppost.”