Tuesday, Stewart Rhodes and his Oath Keepers—who millions of Americans saw with their own eyes, on live television, attacking the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021 intending to prevent the orderly transition of executive power—were handed a “Get Out of Jail Free” card by the Justice Department, currently being run by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Through sheer force of character, we presume, Judge Mehta declined to mention Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener in his opinion. Nevertheless, he made it clear that he would have preferred not to issue it.
“Before turning to the government’s proffered justifications for dismissal, it is important to note the reasons it has not offered. The government does not say that the charges were legally deficient or that the evidence presented is insufficient to sustain Defendants’ convictions. … the government does not maintain that dismissal is in the public interest to rectify a fundamental error or a grave injustice.
“Its lead argument is rather that dismissal is appropriate to protect Defendants from harassment. … That is a strange argument. … After all, the government has given no indication that it will recharge these Defendants, in the District or elsewhere. To the contrary, it bestows upon them unearned grace by wiping their records clean. The harassment rationale has no place here.”
“Next, the government argues that dismissal ‘effectuates the President’s January 20, 2025, proclamation.’ … The government’s argument relating to the Proclamation is a head-scratcher. The President’s decree expressly carves these Defendants out from the greater clemencies of pardons and dismissals it affords others. The President could have pardoned them, too, but elected not to. Or he could have directed the dismissal of their cases on appeal, but he did not do that, either. The government nowhere explains what has changed. … The government’s reliance on the Proclamation to justify dismissal of this case therefore provides no answer at all.”
Says Mehta, the government’s final reason for dropping the case is that “the public’s interest in a trial of these defendants has already fully vested”—whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean—and that “[d]ismissal of these cases with prejudice will not erase this public record.
“That position is surprising. The government is ordinarily of the view that accountability, not mere publicity, is what is in the public interest. That justice is achieved when a group of 12 people, with no interest in the case’s outcome and no perceived notion of the facts, decides whether a defendant is guilty of the charged conduct based on the law and the evidence. The government is right that dismissal will not erase the public record; it will, however, erase the legal judgments that these Defendants broke the criminal law. And not just any criminal law—laws aimed at punishing those who conspire to commit extralegal violence to prevent the execution of the laws or the carrying out of official duties. … The government thus asks to absolve these Defendants of crimes against the United States itself. In this court’s view, that is not in the public interest.
“Ultimately, though, this judicial officer’s mere difference of opinion is of no moment. [Here Mehta explains, with tidy citations, that unlike Presidents, judges have no power to just make shit up.] And importantly, the court has no evidence before it to question whether prosecutors here have properly discharged their official duties. If it is their view that the public interest is served by surrendering convictions for crimes against the country to the gloss of an enduring public record, then that is an assessment to which this court must yield.
“This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed. Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.”
Also on Tuesday, the Judiciary Committee voted to send Todd Blanche’s nomination as Attorney General to the full Senate. Unless we are somehow mistaken or hallucinating, this would be the same Todd Blanche who was formerly the personal lawyer of our first felonious President, who invited the Oath Keepers and countless other hooligans to come the Capitol on January 6th: “Be there, will be wild.”
Since Blanche is now the Acting Attorney General, we can only assume that he is responsible, if we may use so quaint and ancient a term, for the legal abomination excoriated above by Judge Mehta.
Finally on Tuesday, in Hell, John Mitchell, who spent 19 months in prison for crimes he committed as Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, gesticulated wildly; his comments were not audible over the shriek of steam blasting out of his ears.
One expects a Brownshirt-adjacent organization to be led by an expert at handling firearms. Not Rhodes. He’s sported an eyepatch since he dropped a .22 and shot an eye out. He is said to stands five foot seven, and weigh 190 pounds.
Stewart Rhodes is no Rooster Cogburn. Sadly, though, we’re probably in for more bold talk from this one-eyed fat man.