The New York Times has lamented the distressing duty fulfilled by an anti-Trump judge appointed by Barack Obama who had to, as part of his judicial duties, dismiss the Jan. 6 protest cases against members of the Oath Keepers.
He was “pained,” the publication complained.
The judge, Amit Mehta, also lashed out at the Trump administration’s request to dismiss the case because he said it was “unearned grace” for the defendants by “wiping their records clean.”
Mehta complained that the events of that day, a protest turned into a riot at the Capitol, which sustained vandalism damage, caused immense damage to the people there as well as politics.
The Times confirmed the judge “expressed deep regret” when he granted a motion by the Department of Justice to toss the charges against the Oath Keepers.
The politicized case brought under the Biden administration had claimed they were guilty of seditious conspiracy.
Most of the hundreds of people involved in the events that day, when only one person, a protester, died, from a point-blank shot from an officer’s gun, were cleared by a blanket pardon issued by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office for his second term.
But Mehta wasn’t the only member of the leftist judiciary in Washington to have complained. So did a Mehta colleague who weeks ago dismissed charges against Proud Boys.
The Times confirmed the moves, which were required by judicial precedent and practice as judges cannot force prosecutors to continue a case if they do not choose to do so, ended the vast attacks assembled by Democrats after the protest against Trump and his supporters.
The “investigation” rose as high as a special congressional committee that was assembled and appeared to have been given the assignment of finding ways to blame Trump, as it cherry-picked information about the day, and then hired production professionals to present their story to the American public.
A key player in that committee, ex-Rep. Liz Cheney, was trashed by her Republican voters in Wyoming who tossed her from office at their first opportunity.
Mehta claimed, “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.”
He did not include the facts that prosecutors often kept defendants accused of little more than trespassing in the Capitol in jail for months, even years, as they assembled their cases.
“The judge seemed unable to bite his tongue entirely, chiding the prosecutors who had requested the dismissal even as he acceded to them,” the Times claimed. “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,” he “whined,” according to one report.
When Trump pardoned others, he commuted the sentences of the Oath Keepers, leaving open the door for this week’s cancelation of the case entirely.
Mehta also scoffed at the idea the dismissal was in the interest of justice.
The events followed Trump’s allegations of integrity lapses in the presidential election that winter, one that installed Joe Biden in the White House.
Of course, evidence now has confirmed that there were many lapses in that election security, including hundreds of thousands of dead people or foreigners listed on state voter rolls and eligible to vote, some of whom did.
Further, Mark Zuckerberg put his thumb on the scales by handing out $400 million plus to elections officials who often used the cash to recruit voters in Democrat districts. And finally, the FBI did the same by claiming, falsely, that the Biden family scandals detailed in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden were Russian disinformation, when agents knew the claims were true.
Newsweek confirmed Mehta’s signature “formally wiped away the convictions” of the members of the Oath Keepers.
A lawyer for Stewart Rhodes, James Lee Bright, wrote on X, “This chapter is now over. Congrats to the remaining defendants. Seditious Conspiracy should never have been charged. It was absolute used fundamentally in the case of our client, Stewart Rhodes, as a thought crime.”
PatriotTV said, “Mehta had no real choice. After the D.C. Circuit vacated the convictions at the DOJ’s request, prosecutors returned to his courtroom and moved to dismiss the superseding indictment with prejudice. Precedent required him to yield. Courts do not get to force the executive branch to keep prosecuting people the president has already freed. Still, Mehta could not resist a lengthy lament.”
