When the FBI raided Elias N. Costian house in Baltimore County in February 2021, they found cocaine, testosterone, marijuana, a scale and weapons. “The defendant was a drug dealer,” prosecutors would say later, adding: “He was also armed.” Costianes said that he was simply supplying himself and friends.
Last September, a federal judge sentenced to costs, who declared himself guilty of possessing a gun while using illegal drugs, one year and one day in a federal prison. But costs then played a new letter: he was also part of the Capitol’s riots on January 6, 2021, and President Donald Trump had forgiven him.
Costianes said that forgiveness also covered his condemnation for weapons, because the FBI raid was related to his forgiven actions on January 6.
And the government agreed.
In seven cases throughout the country, the Department of Justice has argued that the separated criminal actions discovered by the investigation of January 6 are covered by Trump’s forgiveness, and unrelated charges, usually by illegal possession of weapons, must be dismissed.
In some of the cases, federal prosecutors initially opposed cleaning sentences for unrelated serious crimes. “The convictions did not occur in the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” prosecutors argued for the first time in the case of Dan Edwin Wilson, sentenced to five years for having weapons after multiple convictions for serious crimes. “And so, because of the simple language of the certificate, forgiveness does not extend to these convictions.”
But in a matter of weeks, Wilson’s prosecutors reversed themselves, saying that “they had received more clarity about the intention of presidential forgiveness” of the Department of Justice and that included “a forgiveness for the sentences of firearms to which the accused declared.”
After Trump’s executive order on January 20, the forgiveness lawyer’s office issued individual certificates to almost all 1,600 accused of January 6, which declared that “forgiveness applies only to sentences for crimes related to events that occurred in or near the Capitol of the United States on January 6, 2021”. When the courts have pressed the Department of Justice for legal or preceding reasoning of why the adjacent cases of January 6 should be expelled, their lawyers have only said that this was Trump’s intention, and the courts should differ to “the reasonable interpretation of the Executive of the Language of Forgiveness.”
The White House declined to comment, and a spokesman for the Department of Justice did not respond.
George T. Pallas, a Miami lawyer who represents the two defendants of January 6 with additional charges, said: “A judge, any judge, does not need to interpret what President Trump wanted to say, we know what he meant. He is speaking through his substitute, the United States assistant prosecutor present in the courtroom. She is telling the judge what her intention was. That is the end of the investigation. “
Although forgiveness says that it is only for crimes related to the riots of January 6, Pallas said that “related” is the keyword: the investigators discovered the alleged other crimes only by investigating the riots, and “but for that investigation” they would not have accused, Pallas said.
Three judges agreed and threw outstanding cases, including that of Guy Reffitt, who took a gun to the Capitol on January 6 and then threatened his family if they reported him, which gave him a sentence of 80 months. When the FBI registered his home in January 2021, they allegedly found a silencer, which is illegal, and was accused in a federal court in Texas.
After Reffitt was released from the prison in his judgment on January 6, a Texas judge last week granted the government’s motion to dismiss the case of the silencer. The judges in DC and Maryland also recently dismissed the cases of “offender in possession” discovered when the suspicious disturbances were first arrested.
Some judges, however, have resisted.
In the district, the United States District Judge, Dabney L. Friedrich, said at a hearing last month for Wilson that stops must “have a fixed meaning” the day they are broadcast. “The intention cannot evolve over time as new cases are called attention (of the president),” said Associated Press informed Friedrich. “I don’t think you can have an open forgiveness,” Friedrich said. “It can’t be ‘we know when we see it'”. He has not yet ruled at Wilson, accompanied by the Department of Justice, to vacate his condemnations for weapons.
Three Federal Courts of Appeals, in Virginia, Florida and California, have also hesitated to immediately grant the government’s motion to dismiss similar cases pending before them. Costianes was already appealing its judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond when the forgiveness of January 6 arrived; That court has asked him and the government to submit reports on the issue of whether forgiveness is applied.
Carol Stewart, a lawyer of Costianes, said in an email the search for the Casianes house in February 2021 “I intended to find some indication of any crime and then try to make it part of the prosecution of” crimes related to January 6. She said Trump “wrote (forgiveness) wide enough to cover searches under the orders of J6 … The courts have no authority to interpret forgiveness when Potus has spoken.”
In the case of Jeremy Brown in Florida, his case of minor crime of January 6 was dismissed, but was sentenced in the trial in 2022 for having classified material and illegally possessing short cannons weapons and live M-67 Granadas, discovered during a search in September 2021. Sentenced to seven years, the former soldier of the Special Forces of the Army appealed the conviction or was the attacker of the 11 years. In Atlanta, when forgiveness of January 6 was issued. He and the Department of Justice asked the Court of Appeals to order the case completely dismissed.
On the oral argument last week, Judge Adalberto Jordan asked Brown’s lawyer why forgiveness covered the case of Florida. “Because the Department of Justice has determined yes,” said lawyer Michael Ufferman.
“And that is not a completely satisfactory answer,” Jordan said. The judge said that he could see the charges of weapon and Granada covered by forgiveness, “but it is not evident to me that forgiveness, even widely interpreted, covers” the condemnation of document classified by a jury.
Jordan asked the prosecutor of prosecutor Holly L. Gershow what orientation he had received from the Department of Justice. “We have received a limited guide on this from the department,” Gershow said. She said justice was reviewing “case by case. And that in this case, the department considers that these crimes are related to the crimes of the events of January 6 because documents and firearms were discovered as a result of a search warrant that investigates the events of January 6”.
The case is pending, while Brown decides if he wants to withdraw his appeal and allow the District Court to consider the government’s motion to dismiss. Ufferman did not respond to a request for comments.
Although Brown received a seven -year sentence for having classified material and has not been forgiven or authorized from the positions, the Federal Prison Office released him anyway, as they did with costs, as shown in the judicial records.
In California, Benjamin John Martin was arrested in September 2021 for serious crimes associated with January 6, and the agents also found a weapon safe with six weapons inside. He had previously been convicted of domestic aggression and forbidden to have a weapon, and was accused of illegal possession of firearms. Condemned in the trial and sentenced in November more than three years in prison, his case was in appeal when forgiveness came.
Martin asked for bail on January 21, while his appeal was considered, but the United States District Judge Jennifer L. Thurson ruled that possession of weapons “did not happen in or near the Capitol” and concluded that “forgiveness does not cover the conviction.” Martin then asked the United States Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit in San Francisco to release him on bail (prosecutors initially opposed, then two weeks later he was backed, followed by a request to annul the conviction.
The Court of Appeals refused to throw the case, but told Thurston to put bail for Martin. Instead, Thurson retired from the case last week. “A good cause that appears,” Thurson wrote without further clarifications, “the assigned district judge disqualifies all procedures in the current action.” Another judge later released Martin, who is represented by Pallas.
In two other cases, the Government has opposed to release on January 6 the defendants who face other positions. In Tennessee, the defendant of January 6, Edward Kelley, is accused of consigning in December 2022 to kill the FBI agents who investigated his case on January 6. Prosecutors on February 18 opposed a motion to dismiss the case, saying that it was “on the completely independent criminal conduct of the defendant in Tennessee, at the end of 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol … not related both in time and in the place of the events that occurred to the United States or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021”.
The judge has not yet ruled on the motion. Kelley’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comments.
And in Washington, prosecutors opposed the dismissal of charges against Taylor Taranto, who already faced charges on January 6 when he was arrested near the DC house of former President Barack Obama in July 2023, allegedly with multiple weapons, large -capacity magazines and hundreds of ammunition rounds. “The actions of Taranto in June 2023 in Washington, DC, were not crimes in the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” prosecutors replied.
The American district judge Carl J. Nichols, appointed by Trump, rejected Taranto’s request to dismiss the case of weapons last month.
But Taranto’s lawyer, Carmen D. Hernández, said he had asked prosecutors to “reconsider in the light of subsequent layoffs in the various cases.” She said that the case of Taranto “fits within the language and intention of forgiveness rather than the other cases that have dismissed because the case of Taranto was presented as a single accusation in this district.” She argued that “the Government implicitly determined that the charges for weapons were” related “to J6’s charges when presenting them in an accusation,” although Nichols rejected that statement when prosecutors initially opposed it.
