Last Updated on February 10, 2025
President Donald Trump in one fell swoop set free all the January 6 prisoners, but some Democrats are refusing to let them go that easily.
Philadelphia’s top prosecutor remains hellbent on investigating state charges to level against pardoned January 6 prisoners from Pennsylvania in a bid to push back against Trump’s mass clemency of his supporters.
Recharging the J6ers for crimes has pardoned them on state charges could pose significant legal hurdles like double jeopardy.
It’s unclear how prosecutors could file state charges when the crimes these release prisoners committed didn’t happen in that particular state.
Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s district attorney and a progressive Democrat told CNN he will continue to examine charges against J6 convicted who assaulted cops or conspired with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers—leaders of those groups were federally convicted of seditious conspiracy.
“To the extent the federal charging encompasses everything we’re talking about, then this argument probably fails, but I am very doubtful that it encompasses everything that we’re talking about,” Krasner told CNN in an interview on Tuesday. “You can have a state prosecution for conduct that was not fully encompassed in the federal prosecution.”
“Those of us who actually believe in the rule of law, and actually believe in the law, and actually believe in order — in other words, those of us who are not MAGA — intend to preserve the values, traditions, laws and Constitution of the United States,” Krasner said. “And that means accountability for the co-conspirators of the 34-time felon president.”
As Krasner gears up to rearrest pardoned J6 convicts, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia are declining to adhere to part of Trump’s proclamation that requires the cases to be dismissed “with prejudice,” which prohibits the case from being prosecuted again.
Judge Tanya Chutkan and Amy Berman Jackson refused to grant the Justice Department its request for dismissal “with prejudice” for three Capitol riot defendants, including one who was a Proud Boys group chapter leader. Instead, the two judges simply dismissed three rioters’ cases, leaving open the possibility charges could be brought again later.
The pardons disrespect the police officers who were assaulted on Jan. 6, Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote on Thursday.
“No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021,” Jackson wrote. “When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.”
Jackson still granted a motion to dismiss the case against J6 defendant Peter Harding, who was indicted on charges of knowingly entering restricted Capitol grounds and violent entry or conduct in the Capitol.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was previously presiding over President Trump’s January 6 cases, also lamented about Trump’s decision to issue a blanket pardon. In an order Chutkan issued in the case against John Banuelos, who was charged with firing a gun outside the Capitol, writing that the pardons could not change the truth of the attack.
“It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan wrote in an order dismissing the case. “And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
