Judge dismisses the last January 6 case, writing that absolving the Oath Keepers is not in the public interest

A federal judge in Washington dismissed the seditious conspiracy indictment against eight members of the Oath Keepers on August 4, ending the last criminal prosecution arising from the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta granted the Justice Department’s motion under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a), which lets the government drop an indictment with the court’s leave. “Reluctantly, the court grants the motion,” Mehta wrote in a 15-page opinion in United States v. Rhodes. The superseding indictment was dismissed with prejudice, which bars the charges from being filed again.

The eight defendants are Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo. Six were convicted of seditious conspiracy, and Watkins and Harrelson were convicted of conspiracy and obstruction offenses. Prison terms ranged from three years for Moerschel to 18 years for Rhodes, according to Law Commentary. Mehta imposed the sentence on Rhodes and called him “an ongoing threat and peril to this country,” NPR reported.

The opinion sets out the conduct that juries heard at two trials. On January 6, Vallejo was at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, serving as what the Oath Keepers called the “Quick Reaction Force,” with a collection of firearms that members had transported to the outskirts of the District. One witness described it as the largest cache of weapons he had seen since serving in the military. On Christmas Day 2020, Meggs posted in an Oath Keepers group chat, “There is gonna be blood in the streets no matter what.” On New Year’s Eve, Rhodes wrote in another chat, “On the 6th, they are going to put the final nail in the coffin of this Republic, unless we fight our way out.”

On January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation that pardoned everyone convicted of January 6 offenses except 14 named individuals. The defendants in this case were among the 14. Trump commuted their sentences to time served, and the opinion notes that the commutation left their convictions in place.

On April 14, 2026, on the eve of the last filing deadline in a long-pending appeal, the government moved to vacate the convictions and send the case back to the district court so it could seek dismissal. The D.C. Circuit granted that motion on May 21, finding without elaboration that vacatur was “just under the circumstances,” and remanded the same day. The government moved to dismiss on May 22. Mehta ordered a fuller explanation, citing a 1973 appeals court ruling that a judge cannot “be content with a mere conclusory statement by the prosecutor that dismissal is in the public interest.” The government filed a supplemental motion on June 18.

Prosecutors offered three reasons. Retrying the defendants would subject them to the kind of harassment Rule 48 is meant to prevent. The January 2025 proclamation required the department to move for dismissal once the convictions were vacated. And the public’s interest had already been served by two trials and the coverage they drew.

Mehta rejected each. The harassment rationale ordinarily applies to charging, dismissing and recharging, he wrote, and “[t]hat is a strange argument” in a case that has been tried twice. He called the reliance on the proclamation “circular,” because dismissal became mandatory only after the government itself moved to vacate the convictions, and the government never explained why it did so. On the third point he wrote that the government “is ordinarily of the view that accountability, not mere publicity, is what is in the public interest.”

The opinion also lists what prosecutors did not say. The government did not argue that the charges were legally deficient or that the evidence was insufficient, did not allege prosecutorial misconduct, and did not identify a legal error producing a wrongful conviction, except possibly on the obstruction counts.

“The government thus asks to absolve these Defendants of crimes against the United States itself,” Mehta wrote. “In this court’s view, that is not in the public interest.” He added, “This court does strongly disagree.” Citing the D.C. Circuit’s decision in United States v. Fokker Services, he concluded that courts lack authority to deny a Rule 48(a) motion over a disagreement with the government’s charging decisions, and that his own view was “of no moment.”

The closing section runs four sentences. “This is the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6. That book is now closed,” Mehta wrote. “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 … to buckle. The court cannot write a different ending.”

James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, congratulated the defendants in a social media post. “Seditious Conspiracy should never have been charged,” Bright wrote, calling the charge a “thought crime.” Democracy Now! reported that the ruling vacates the seditious conspiracy convictions, including those of Rhodes.

Two other Oath Keepers, Joshua James and Brian Ulrich, pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and cooperated with prosecutors. The government’s motion did not cover them, and their convictions remain in place.