Enrique Tarrio got 22 years for January 6 and was not in Washington that day.
Now Trump's DOJ just moved to erase the convictions entirely — permanently.
Cynthia Hughes has been waiting five years to ask one question, and the timing could not be more perfect.
Jeanine Pirro Just Moved to Erase the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers Seditious Conspiracy Convictions
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro signed a court filing asking a federal appeals court to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes — sentenced to 18 years — along with members Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, and Jessica Watkins.
Pirro's filing stated the government "has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice."
Separate motions will follow for four more Oath Keepers and four Proud Boys members — including Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, and Dominic Pezzola.
Pirro's filing goes further than a standard dismissal: prosecutors intend to drop these cases "with prejudice."
No refiling. The federal government is walking away and locking the door behind it.
Trump had pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day back in office, but stopped short of full pardons for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leadership — commuting their sentences instead, leaving convictions on the books.
Pirro's motion finishes the job.
The January 6 Families Biden DOJ Destroyed While Protecting Its Weaponized Prosecutions
Cynthia Hughes is the founder of the Patriot Freedom Project.
She is not a TV commentator.
She is a New Jersey mother who started a nonprofit after her own nephew — Timothy Hale, a military veteran — was thrown into solitary confinement before trial for nonviolent trespassing.
She sat with these families while the Biden DOJ was busy winning awards for its prosecution numbers.
Hughes watched wives hold households together while their husbands sat in pretrial detention for months — in some cases over a year — without conviction, without income, without in-person family visits.
She watched children try to process why federal agents showed up before dawn with flashbangs and took their fathers away in handcuffs.
And she watched a justice system that is supposed to judge conduct individually treated hundreds of Americans as interchangeable pieces in one giant political script — because the media needed villains and the Biden administration needed a weapon against Donald Trump.
Now that Pirro's motion is moving through the courts, the same voices who never asked a hard question about 18-year sentences are invoking the Constitution.
Hughes is done pretending to take that seriously.
Her question for every member of Congress and every anchor who called these prosecutions justice: where were you when American families were losing everything?
The $100 Million Civil Rights Lawsuit That Comes After the Convictions Are Gone
The dismissals are not the end of this story.
Last year, Tarrio, Biggs, Rehl, Nordean, and Pezzola filed a $100 million civil lawsuit against the federal government, alleging prosecutors violated their constitutional rights during the January 6 prosecutions.
That lawsuit is still active.
If the appeals court vacates these convictions as Pirro has requested, it strips the government of its central defense in the Tarrio civil rights lawsuit — the argument that the prosecutions were lawful in the first place.
During the summer of 2020, the Biden DOJ's predecessors dropped charges in roughly 90 percent of protest-related cases across major cities.
Philadelphia dismissed 95 percent of all riot arrests despite rioters burning police cars and looting stores.
The J6 prosecutions were not justice applied equally — they were a political campaign with federal prosecutors as the infantry.
Merrick Garland ran that campaign for four years, handed out 18- and 22-year sentences for political enemies, and is now watching a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney file court papers declaring his life's work contrary to the interests of justice.
The families Cynthia Hughes sat with knew that five years ago.
Jeanine Pirro just put it in a court filing.
Sources:
- Janice Hisle, "DOJ Petitions Court To Toss Convictions Of Unpardoned Jan. 6 Defendants," The Epoch Times, April 16, 2026.
- Cynthia Hughes, "Patriot Freedom Project founder Cynthia Hughes has had enough of the J6 bullsh*t," Revolver News, April 16, 2026.
- Jessica McBride, "Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio gets 22 years in January 6 case," Fox News, September 5, 2023.
- John Solomon, "FBI strategy memo on election violence raises questions about double standard between J6, BLM riots," Just the News, February 11, 2026.
- Fischer v. United States, 603 U.S. ___ (2024), Supreme Court of the United States.
