By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge overseeing a slew of criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol condemned President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons on Wednesday, saying they reflected a “revisionist myth” about the insurgency.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, in dismissing charges against two men accused of taking part in the riots, Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs, said Trump’s justification for pardoning nearly all 1,590 people accused in the attack was flawed.
“No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, gloat over obstructing the constitutional process of Congress and do so with impunity,” Howell wrote in the order.
“It only raises the dangerous specter of future wrongdoing by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law,” the judge added.
The White House proclamation announcing the pardons states that this action “ends a grave national injustice committed against the American people over the past four years and begins the process of national reconciliation.”
Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, tearing down barricades, battling police and sending lawmakers running for their lives in a failed attempt to stop the confirmation of Trump’s election defeat.
They were inflamed by Trump’s false claims that his defeat was the result of widespread fraud, claims the new president continued to make even after returning to office four years later.
Trump’s pardon, fulfilling a campaign promise, extended to all but 14 people charged in the attack. The remaining 14, members of the far-right groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, had their convictions intact but were freed from lengthy prison sentences.
Trump’s order also directed the Justice Department to dismiss about 300 pending cases against people accused of participating in the riots.
Howell was not the only judge to express concern about the pardon.
“Dismissals, post-conviction pardons and commutations will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in an order dismissing another case from January 6.
Federal judges in Washington, who have warned for years about the seriousness of the riots, largely granted without comment prosecutors’ requests to dismiss the charges.
But Howell, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama and previously served as chief justice, used her order to defend prosecutors and law enforcement officials who investigated the riots.
Howell clashed with Trump allies over her treatment of the January 6 defendants and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, whom she held responsible for defaming two election workers in Georgia.
“This court cannot allow the revisionist myth conveyed in this presidential statement to stand,” Howell wrote.
