Judge Orders Reincarceration of Jan. 6 Rioter Despite Trump Pardon
Matthew Chapman is a video game designer who attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and lives in San Marcos, Texas. Before joining Raw Story, he wrote for Shareblue and AlterNet, specializing in election and policy coverage.
A convicted Jan. 6 rioter may have thought he was getting a free ride out of prison like countless others when President Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon for crimes related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. But as of Thursday, a judge ruled he must return to prison.
Dan Wilson of Louisville, Kentucky, attacked the Capitol with the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy before Trump commuted their sentence. He was active in planning the attack, at one point telling his colleagues, "I am ready to lay my life on the line. It is time for good men to do bad things."
According to Politico's Kyle Cheney, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich of Washington, D.C. has ruled that Trump's pardon for the Jan. 6 offenses "does not extend" to a separate set of weapons convictions initially brought by the Western District of Kentucky; he pleaded guilty to possessing a gun as a prohibited person and possession of an unregistered gun, along with conspiracy to impede a federal officer, and received a five-year sentence.
Wilson's legal team attempted to argue that the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction. But Friedrich disagreed, saying, "given that the Court's judgment remains operative with regards to the defendant's firearms convictions, and the defendant has remaining time left to serve on his five-year (60 month) sentence, the Court cannot discern any reason that it would be deprived of jurisdiction over the defendant nor why his erroneous release would bar the government from reincarcerating him, as it apparently intends to do."
Friedrich ordered Wilson to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons, to serve the remainder of the conviction associated with the firearms offenses.
Since Trump pardoned the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, several others have been re-arrested or otherwise landed in trouble with the law.
Emily Hernandez of Missouri, who was pardoned for a misdemeanor Jan. 6 offense, was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for a fatal drunk driving crash in 2022. Andrew Taake of Texas, another pardoned offender, was arrested by authorities in Texas this month on allegations of soliciting a minor in 2016. And Matthew Huttle of Indiana was shot dead by state troopers during an alleged resisting arrest incident.
