On Friday, US District Judge Amit Mehta ordered that members of the Oath Keepers group, whose sentences began on January 6, were recently barred from the U.S. Capitol and an adjacent area by President Donald Trump unless given permission by the court.
Among those affected is the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, whose sentence was condemned by President Trump along with others who were pardoned. As my colleague Streiff noted, this was an adjustment to the policy promised on the campaign trail:
The release of non-violent J6 prisoners was a campaign promise.
…
Splitting the prisoners into two groups and publishing both, but not publishing them equally, made a lot of sense. Everyone would be out of prison, but the “worst” offenders would not be pardoned.
Earlier this week, Trump signed both J6 pardons and commutations, the latter involving “violent” offenders:
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Here is what Judge Mehta wrote in today’s order:
“You may not knowingly enter the United States Capitol Building or surrounding grounds of Trump.
The order, which was also imposed on some of Rhodes’ co-defendants, comes just two days after Rhodes visited the Capitol on Wednesday, Politico reported in the piece linked above:
For several hours at the Capitol, Rhodes interviewed numerous reporters, met with allies at a Dunkin’ Donuts and visited with Republican lawmakers.
The judge has made it no secret that he opposes Trump and threatens the J6 Committee and the 2024 Democratic Party narrative about the Republican nominee as tardy as December 2024.
Mehta said: “The thought of Rhodes being ‘liberated’ by the incoming Trump administration is ‘frightening’ and ‘should be frightening’ for anyone who cares about democracy in this country.”
The Justice Department, now in the hands of DC’s Assistant Attorney General, immediately gives Ed Martin a major pushback on the judge’s order. On Friday, Martin “signed the motion asking U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to reverse his position issued just hours earlier on Friday. The defendants will no longer be subject to the conditions of supervised release and probation.”
He continued in a later press release, making a massive comparison to Biden’s last-minute pardons of family members and people like General Mark Milleryand saying that Americans would be in an uproar if a judge banned them from the Capitol:
“If a judge ruled that Jim Biden, General Mark Milley or any other person could be banned from visiting America’s capital – even after receiving a last-minute, pre-emptive pardon from the former president – I believe most Americans would raise objections.
“The people referred to in our application have had their sentences bypassed – time, end of sentence.”
This echoes Point Redstate’s streak, which, in its piece on Joe Biden, along with J6 committee members, excused many from his administration. He wrote:
The other troubling part is that the most unjust sentences, those of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and 3 percenters, were allowed to stand for “seditious conspiracy” while John Brennan, James Comey and Adam Schiff are allowed to walk free.
Of course, he even issued last-minute pardons—on term day—of members of his own family.
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Rhodes responded to Judge Mehta’s order in a video Friday, asking Pres. Trump to issue novel pardons in delicate of Mehta’s ‘retaliation’:
Rhodes responded to Mehta’s command in A video posted Friday by Ally Ivan Raiklin, who called on Trump to grant him and other Oath Keepers full pardons to free them from all of their obligations to the court. He said Mehta’s order was “retaliation” for his decision to go to the Capitol on Wednesday to meet with lawmakers and reporters.
This is a developing story and we will update you with novel information as warranted.
