Ethan Nordean was looking at 18 years in federal prison. Joseph Biggs, 17. Zachary Rehl, 15. Dominic Pezzola, 10. Their former chairman Enrique Tarrio drew 22 years — the longest January 6 sentence handed down by any court. All convicted in 2023 on charges that included seditious conspiracy, the kind of charge historically reserved for people who wage actual war against the United States.
On July 10, a federal judge wiped every one of those convictions off the books.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly — a Trump appointee from 2017, for whatever that's worth — granted the Department of Justice's motion to dismiss the Proud Boys case with prejudice. That legal term means it's done. Permanently closed. The federal government cannot refile the charges. Ever.
The DOJ had moved to dismiss the cases back in April, characterizing the prosecutions as "Biden-era weaponized prosecutions." The motion was consistent with President Trump's executive order issued on his first day back in office, which granted 1,500 full pardons and 14 commutations — including commutations for Nordean, Biggs, Rehl, and Pezzola — and directed the Attorney General to pursue dismissals with prejudice across the board.
Judge Kelly didn't exactly throw a party over it. He went out of his way to stress he was following the law, not endorsing the outcome. "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," Kelly wrote.
Fair enough, Your Honor. Nobody's confusing you for a cheerleader.
Kelly also acknowledged the obvious: "Indeed, it is hard to see how any course other than granting the motion in full could make practical sense." The court, he wrote, "lacks the authority to compel the Executive to pursue a prosecution, full stop." In other words, even a judge who clearly wanted to keep these convictions on the record admitted the government's position was legally unassailable.
Here's what's worth sitting with for a minute. The Biden DOJ reached into the federal code and pulled out seditious conspiracy — a charge designed for people who try to overthrow the government by force — and slapped it on men whose actual conduct involved obstructing law enforcement and destruction of government property. Serious? Sure. Worthy of prosecution? Reasonable people can debate it. But "seditious conspiracy" is the legal equivalent of calling a bar fight an assassination attempt. It was a charge selected for maximum political theater, not proportional justice.
The other side will tell you this dismissal is a travesty. That these men committed violent crimes and the system is letting them walk because of political favoritism. Kelly himself noted that the government's motion came "without regard for the seriousness of the conduct at issue." He even took a shot at Trump's view of January 6, writing that "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."
But here's what that argument skips: the executive branch has always had the authority to decline prosecution. Every president in American history has exercised clemency. Every DOJ has made judgment calls about which cases to pursue and which to drop. When Obama's DOJ declined to prosecute IRS officials who targeted conservative nonprofits, we didn't get lectures about the sanctity of convictions. When Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress and nothing happened, the legal commentariat shrugged. Prosecutorial discretion is only an outrage when it flows in one direction.
Tarrio, for his part, didn't hold back. "The seditious conspiracy hoax and the whole rigged indictment against me, Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, Zach Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola has been VACATED!!!" he posted after the ruling. Rehl kept it simpler: "Finally, it's ALL OVER! January 6th can now be a thing of the past for me!"
Fifteen-year sentence. Gone. Seventeen-year sentence. Gone. Twenty-two years for a man who wasn't even at the Capitol that day. Gone.
The charges were built to send a message. The dismissals send a different one.