The January 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol building certainly got a bit out of control, but I have never seen it as anything more serious than a fraternity keg party that spilled out onto the streets, or perhaps University of Kentucky students burning a decrepit old couch in the middle of State Street after an unexpected UK football victory. The vindictiveness with which President Joe Biden and Republican-hating Attorney General Merrick Garland went after the protesters was wholly unreasonable.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump pardoned the vast majority of the Capitol kerfufflers, but there were 14 for whom he only commuted their sentences, and did not pardon their convictions. Now four remaining injustices have been corrected:

Judge vacates convictions of 4 Proud Boys in Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection

By Jacob Rosen | Saturday, July 11, 2026 | 7:43 AM EDT | CBS News

A federal judge on Friday agreed to dismiss the convictions of four members of the far-right Proud Boys group for their actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly signed off on the Justice Department’s move to dismiss the convictions against Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola, but not before saying that President Trump’s views about Jan. 6 are based on “fiction” and citing a lack of other levers he could pull to stop the move.

“There is little mystery about why the Government is moving to dismiss this case, or whether dismissal is in fact what the Executive seeks,” Kelly wrote in his memorandum. “President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6—whether those views are based on fact or fiction—are well known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them through the Executive Order.”

In 2023, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were convicted of seditious conspiracy and all sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Pezzola became one of the more recognizable faces of the attempted insurrection after video showed him smashing a Capitol window with a riot shield. He was convicted of assaulting or resisting officers, robbery involving government property, obstruction and other charges.

That Judge Kelly was disappointed in having to dismiss the convictions is obvious not only from his message here, but the 15-year-sentence he handed Mr Rehl in August of 2023, though Mr Rehl’s sentence was “half the minimum term recommended by federal sentencing guidelines and the 30 years that prosecutors sought.” The Department of Justice then appealed Mr Rehl’s sentence as being far too short.

Mr Rehl had been arrested on March 17, 2021, and held without bail for the 2½ years before he was tried and convicted, spending just two months short of four years in prison for a crime the conviction of which has now been dismissed. Reporter Jeremy Roebuck for The Philadelphia Inquirer trumpeted his arrest as having been helped by the newspaper:

Rehl’s arrest comes two weeks after The Inquirer reported on photos and videos that had circulated widely on social media showing him at the forefront of a crowd of Proud Boys and followers, many of whom had already been charged.^[1]Hyperlink in quotation was not in the cited original, but added by me.

Reading the articles by Mr Roebuck and in the Inquirer in general concerning the Capitol kerfuffle tells me that the reporter specifically, and the newspaper’s editors in general, were heavily biased against President Trump, the January 6 protesters, and really everything concerned with Republicans.

Being a Philadelphian, the city’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving, police-hating and absolutely eaten up by #TrumpDerangementSyndrome-afflicted persecutor, Larry Krasner, will probably take time out from his efforts to free convicted murderers to find something with which to charge Mr Rehl now.

It might be easier to understand Mr Krasner’s complaints if he and his minions weren’t already in legal hot water for not telling the whole truth to state and federal judges in their attempts to free previously convicted criminals.

The New York Times reported:

Federal prosecutors first requested that the case be closed in May, saying that dismissing the charges was “in the interests of justice.” At the same time, they asked for the dismissal of cases against a dozen members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, who had also been charged with seditious conspiracy.

Most of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged in those cases had not received full pardons, but rather had their sentences commuted — a move that freed them from prison. The judge overseeing the Oath Keepers cases, Amit P. Mehta, also of the U.S. District Court in Washington, has not yet joined Judge Kelly in issuing a ruling dismissing them.

So it’s not quite over yet: the cases against the Oath Keepers have not yet been dismissed, though it seems certain they will be.

Through four miserable years under the Biden Administration, and 1½ under President Trump, it will be good to see all of the legal bovine feces of the Capitol kerfuffle behind us. It should never have been carried as far as it was under Messrs Biden and Garland, and a lot of good people had their lives and jobs disrupted by the persecution under the Democrats; many who shouldn’t have spent time behind bars, and while convictions have been pardoned and reversed, those people can’t get their time back.