Judge Lifts Restriction Barring Oath Keepers Leader From D.C.
Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers who recently had his 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy commuted by President Donald Trump, will be allowed to enter the U.S. Capitol and Washington, D.C., following a brief tug-of-war in court.
Monday’s decision from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes only days after the Justice Department, through interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin, a prominent Trump ally, first pushed back on an order by Mehta that barred Rhodes and several other Oath Keepers from entering the Capitol or Washington without first consulting prosecutors under conditional terms of their probation.
Rhodes was in the Capitol last week doing media interviews and in one interview with the BBC suggested police were responsible for the violence at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters.
Martin, once on the board of the Jan. 6 defendant advocacy group Patriot Freedom Project and a supporter of the Stop the Steal movement — he had VIP seating at the Ellipse with Trump ally Michael Flynn at the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally — said in a statement to Politico after Mehta first banned Rhodes: “If a judge decided that Jim Biden, General Mark Milley, or another individual were forbidden to visit America’s capital — even after receiving a last-minute, preemptive pardon from the former President — I believe most Americans would object.”
“The individuals referenced in our motion have had their sentences commuted — period, end of sentence,” Martin said.
In his order Monday, Mehta said that although he recognized the president’s “authority to grant clemency is ‘unlimited’ save for the limits imposed by the Constitution” and he recognized, too, that a pardon, typically speaking, negates the effect of an underlying conviction, a commutation, which was what Trump granted Rhodes and other Oath Keepers, does not erase the conviction itself.
This distinction “means that the defendant’s original sentences, including their terms of supervised release remain intact.”
“President Trump’s commutation does not alter the court (and the juries’) judgment, it affects only their execution. Dismissing their supervised release therefore is not appropriate,” Mehta wrote.
Nevertheless, Mehta said he found Martin’s position “reasonable” because of how the nation’s courts have interpreted presidential acts of clemency in the past.
Trump’s executive order commuting the sentences of Oath Keepers to time served as of Jan. 25 could be understood to include “all sanctions imposed for a crime,” and that includes imprisonment, terms of supervised release or probation and fines, Mehta wrote.
“The Department’s reading is further supported by the fact that President Trump’s commutation order is unconditional,” Mehta wrote. “Defendants are required to take no further action to receive its benefit.”
However, he pointed out, this “unconditional commutation stands in contrast to recent clemency practices.”
“Presidents have been explicit when they intend to commute only the custodial portion of a sentence but not the term of supervised release,” Mehta wrote Monday.
Trump was more exacting, for example, in 2018, when he commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a first-time nonviolent drug offender whose case rose to prominence after reality TV star Kim Kardashian made Johnson’s case to Trump during an Oval Office visit. Trump commuted her sentence, but he left the terms of her five-year supervised release intact.
Trump did not fully pardon her until 2020.
Obama did this with commutations during his presidency, as did former President Joe Biden as recently as Jan. 17, when he commuted the sentences of hundreds of people but left the terms of their conditions for release in place.
Yet, Mehta wrote, “It is not for this court to divine why President Trump commuted Defendants’ sentences, or to assess whether it was sensible to do so.”
The judge’s “sole task,” he said, is to determine the effect of Trump’s executive order commuting and pardoning Jan. 6 defendants.
Mehta would not dismiss all of the terms of supervised release but said the court would vacate the order adding location restrictions.
When Rhodes was holding media interviews at the Capitol, he had remarked that he hoped to return to the area as often as he could. He’s already made his way to VIP seating at a Trump rally.
According to ABC, at Trump’s speech in Las Vegas just days ago, Rhodes was tucked into VIP seating on stage where Trump was set to make remarks about his proposal to end taxes on tips.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and a number of other charges alongside Kelly Meggs, the Florida chapter leader of Oath Keepers, in November 2022. The men were tried alongside Oath Keepers Jessica Watkins and Ken Harrelson as well as an Oath Keepers associate, Thomas Caldwell, but Watkins, Harrelson and Caldwell were acquitted of the seditious conspiracy charge.
Other Oath Keepers who were tried on sedition charges separately and convicted include Roberto Minuta, Edward Vallejo, Joseph Hackett and David Moerschel. Trump commuted their sentences, too.
Rhodes’ 18-year prison sentence for conspiring to stop the transfer of power on Jan. 6 was the second-longest sentence of all Jan. 6 cases. Meggs received 12 years, Minuta received 45 months, Vallejo and Moerschel each received 36 months, and Hackett received 42 months.
Only the leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, surpassed Rhodes with a 22-year prison sentence.
Tarrio was granted a full pardon by Trump despite a jury and judge spending months poring over evidence that led to his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other charges. Since emerging from prison, Tarrio has suggested that Jan. 6 investigators should be “put behind bars.”
