Enrique Tarrio called the dismissal of charges against his fellow Proud Boys vindication and a victory for the group. File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo
July 11 (UPI) — Top members of the far-right group Proud Boys had their convictions dismissed on Friday, ending the federal case against the men accused of leading the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a request by the Department of Justice to wipe out the seditious conspiracy charges against Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola and Joseph Biggs.
President Trump pardoned more than 1,500 of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
But he had only commuted the sentence of the four Proud Boys leaders, leaving them out of jail but still convicted.
Trump’s DOJ in April asked a federal court to fully dismiss the charges against the four men.
Kelly, a Trump appointee, granted the request but added, “No one should mistake the court’s granting of the government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions.”
“In light of fundamental separation of powers principles … the proper course here is for the court simply to grant the motion in full,” Kelly said, according to Politico.
The attack on the Capitol resulted in injuries to more than 140 police officers and caused $3 million in damage.
“As the court has said many times, the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a perilous event,” Kelly wrote in his decision, as reported by The Washington Post.
“It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured,” he added. “It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government — Congress — that the founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.”
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio saw the dismissal as vindication.
“We took the worst they threw at us — the raids, the solitary, the lies, and we stood tall,” he wrote on X after the ruling. “Trump dropped the pardons and now the rest is crumbling. Justice is SERVED!”
“Proud Boys don’t lose,” Tarrio added. “We WIN. This is OUR victory.”
