Judge grants DOJ’s request to toss remaining Jan. 6 convictions of Proud Boys

Capitol riotJudge grants DOJ’s request to toss remaining Jan. 6 convictions of Proud BoysThe convictions are some of the last remaining cases after President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons in January 2025.Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Prosecutors said Joseph Biggs, second from left, was serving “as an instigator and leader” during the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / The Washington Post via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJuly 10, 2026, 10:51 PM EDTBy Kyla Guilfoil and Ryan J. ReillyA federal judge on Friday agreed to toss the convictions of four Proud Boys who attacked the Capitol in 2021, fulfilling a Justice Department request to clear some of the last remaining cases in the wake of President Donald Trump’s mass pardons of Jan. 6 rioters.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted the motion to dismiss the convictions against Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola with prejudice, meaning the case is permanently closed.Kelly, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, wrote that while the federal government can request that a case be vacated, he did not approve of the administration’s move here.“Because the decisions to issue the Executive Order and to abandon this prosecution—even after the Government secured convictions for serious crimes relating to the attack on the Capitol on January 6—are solely the Executive’s, no one should mistake the Court’s granting of the Government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions,” he wrote.Kelly indicated that he could not sustain the case once the Justice Department declined to maintain its prosecution of the defendants.“Indeed, it is hard to see how any course other than granting the motion in full could make practical sense,” he wrote. “Denying the motion would not somehow revive the convictions that the Court of Appea...