The Justice Department now says that President Donald Trump’s clemency for Jan. 6 rioters covers unrelated crimes that were discovered during FBI searches stemming from the attack on the Capitol.
Federal prosecutors revealed the new legal position this week in court papers seeking to drop gun charges against two former Jan. 6 defendants. The guns in question were found at the two men’s homes during the Jan. 6 investigation, but the alleged gun crimes themselves were not connected to the riot.
Nonetheless, prosecutors moved to dismiss the gun cases by invoking Trump’s Day 1 executive order granting mass clemency to Jan. 6 defendants.
That order issued pardons to roughly 1,500 people who had been convicted of “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021. It also directed the attorney general to dismiss all pending prosecutions for “conduct related to” those events.
