Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons Don’t Cover Gun, Conspiracy Charges: Judges

Several judges have denied bids to vacate convictions based on the president’s pardons.

Protesters and police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6, 2021, defendants do not extend to charges that rely on evidence gathered during searches conducted as part of Jan. 6 investigations, according to new rulings from federal judges.

Trump in January pardoned some 1,500 people, including many who were convicted of crimes related to Jan. 6.

Dan Wilson, one of those convicted, was released from prison after Trump issued the pardons. A court ordered him back into custody because he had previously pleaded guilty to illegally possessing firearms.

Wilson argued that Trump’s pardons should cover the convictions because authorities searched his Kentucky home as part of the Jan. 6 probe. Government lawyers, after initially opposing the position, later told the court that they were aligned with Wilson.

Trump in a proclamation said that the pardons covered offenses “relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled on March 13 that the firearm convictions must stand.

“Because Wilson did not use the firearms he possessed in Kentucky when he conspired to impede and injure officers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, his firearm convictions are not covered by the Presidential Pardon,” the judge said.

Friedrich said that the language in the pardon “leaves open the possibility that certain criminal actions may be close enough in time and place to the events of January 6 so as to fall within the pardon.” She added, “But the phrase cannot extend so far as to cover any criminal offense—no matter how physically or temporally remote to the January 6 Capitol events—solely because some evidence supporting the offense was recovered during a January 6 investigation.”

The U.S. Constitution grants the president authority to pardon any offenses, the judge concluded, and he can still pardon Wilson for unrelated convictions if he chooses. She ordered Wilson to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons to serve the rest of his five-year sentence.

“Unfortunately, Judge Friedrich missed the point,” George Pallas, a lawyer for Wilson, told The Epoch Times via email. “Historically, pardons occur when a president has one foot out the door. President Trump’s J6 pardons differ, he announced them on Day One. In this case, a judge does not need to guess what the presidential intent was because President Trump is in the courtroom speaking through his surrogate, the prosecutor. He is telling the judge what his intent was. End of the story.”

In another recent ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan denied a similar attempt to vacate convictions.

“[A]pplying the ordinary meaning of President Trump’s pardon, the Court finds that it does not encompass defendant’s Tennessee Case because this case involved separate offense conduct that was physically, temporally, and otherwise unrelated to defendant’s conduct in the D.C. Case and/or events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Varlan wrote.

Edward Kelley had asked the court to vacate his convictions for conspiracy and threatening a federal official, arguing Trump’s pardon covered the conduct because the evidence was garnered through a Jan. 6-related search.

Prosecutors had said that the judge should reject Kelley’s request.

“The crimes for which an East Tennessee jury convicted the defendant did not occur at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. They occurred entirely within the Eastern District of Tennessee nearly two years later. By the plain language of the Proclamation, dismissal of this case is not warranted,” they said in a Feb. 18 filing.

A lawyer representing Kelley did not respond to a request for comment. At least one other judge in February denied a similar motion.

The U.S. Department of Justice initially held the position that Trump’s pardons did not cover cases stemming from searches conducted as part of the Jan. 6 probe. Prosecutors later told courts, including in the Wilson case, that some of those cases were covered.

A prosecutor told Friedrich that the reversal was based on “further clarity on the intent of the Presidential Pardon.”

Friedrich said the inconsistency led to her ruling, noting that prosecutors still maintain that some of the Jan. 6 defendants should not have their convictions overturned because they are unrelated.

“These selective applications of the pardon undermine the reasonableness of the Department’s position,” she said. “Apart from being unreasonable, the Department’s current interpretation diverges sharply from its previous position, is being inconsistently applied, and appears to be a post hoc rationalization advanced to support its ongoing litigating positions.”