The DOJ locked a massive January 6 evidence database behind a password and called it justice.
Now Trump called those prosecutions a grave national injustice – and a federal judge has to decide who was right.
One motion filed last week could force the government to show America exactly what it spent five years hiding.
DOJ Kept January 6 Surveillance Footage and Case Files Locked Away for Five Years
Attorney Roger Roots of the Ticktin Law Group filed in federal court on behalf of J6 defendant Dominic Pezzola, asking a judge to dissolve the sweeping protective order that has kept the government's January 6 discovery database sealed from the public since 2021.
The motion demands that the government's Evidence.com and Relativity databases – containing surveillance footage, communications, and investigative records from one of the largest criminal prosecutions in DOJ history – be preserved and opened to journalists, historians, researchers, and ordinary Americans.
The legal foundation is straightforward: the Supreme Court has long recognized a presumptive right of public access to criminal proceedings and judicial records.
Circumstances have changed dramatically since those protective orders were entered in 2021.
Trump's January 20, 2025 proclamation stated it was ending "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people." The DOJ under Jeanine Pirro moved in April 2026 to vacate the remaining convictions of Pezzola and his Proud Boys co-defendants, with a DOJ spokesperson calling them "years-long, Biden-era weaponized prosecutions."
If the government itself now calls these prosecutions corrupt, the argument for keeping the evidence sealed behind a password gets a lot harder to make.
Brady Violations Were Almost a Daily Occurrence According to J6 Defendants
Treniss Evans – founder of Condemned USA, J6 defendant, and author of Call It Insurrection, Comrade – has spent years watching what he describes as systemic abuse of the discovery process.
"The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers so-called trials were two of the most visible miscarriages of justice in recent times," Evans said.
He argues the sealed databases contain the evidence needed to evaluate what defense attorneys flagged throughout the litigation: alleged entrapment, selective prosecution, and what Evans calls near-daily Brady violations – the prosecutor's constitutional obligation to hand over evidence favorable to the defense.
"Brady violations, the government's failure to adhere to discovery obligations, were almost a daily occurrence and served up as the injustice du jour," Evans said.
Brady v. Maryland has been settled law since 1963.
Suppressing evidence favorable to the defense violates due process – and DOJ prosecutors did it anyway, for years, in the most high-profile political prosecution in a generation.
January 6 Evidence Was Already Disappearing Before Anyone Could Examine It
A media coalition had already been down this road once before.
In February 2025, a group of press organizations went to court after nine video exhibits from a J6 case against defendant Glen Simon vanished without explanation from the government's evidence platform.
Chief Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to halt any further removal of video or court records and explain what happened.
That order came less than a month into Trump's second term.
The evidence was already vanishing before anyone could examine it.
Transparency only threatens people with something to hide.
DOJ Called Its Own January 6 Prosecutions Weaponized Now a Judge Decides What America Sees
The filing carries real legal weight – there is a live defendant behind it with standing to challenge the protective order in federal court.
Trump commuted the sentences of the top Proud Boys convicts on January 20, 2025, but did not issue full pardons.
Those convictions still stand, giving the attorney a constitutional argument backed by Supreme Court precedent on public access to criminal proceedings.
Then the DOJ handed the motion a gift.
In April 2026, Jeanine Pirro's office moved to vacate those same convictions entirely, calling them "years-long, Biden-era weaponized prosecutions."
Every American who watched those prosecutions unfold should be furious at what that admission means.
The government spent five years prosecuting these men, locking the evidence behind a password the public couldn't touch – and now its own prosecutors are calling the cases corrupt.
The court will now decide whether that evidence stays buried forever.
History doesn't belong to the people who built the database.
It belongs to the country that paid for it.
Sources:
- Jenn Baker, "Five Years Of Secrets: Motion Filed To Expose Hidden J6 Evidence The Government Won't Let America See," The Gateway Pundit, June 26, 2026.
- "DOJ moves to vacate Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers," Washington Examiner, April 15, 2026.
