Posted on 03/10/2025 10:33:41 PM PDT by Libloather
President Donald Trump’s blanket pardon for the rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, does not cover a conspiracy by one defendant to kill the law enforcement officials who investigated him, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Edward Kelley, who was convicted of the conspiracy last year by a federal jury in Tennessee, had argued that Trump’s sweeping clemency for rioters should also cover his conviction since the agents and officers he targeted were connected to the Jan. 6 investigation.
The Trump administration had opposed Kelley’s claim, saying the conspiracy was too far removed from the Jan. 6 attack to fit into Trump’s pardon. But simultaneously, the Justice Department has sought to apply Trump’s clemency to an increasingly broad range of crimes — unconnected to the Jan. 6 attack — in courts across the country, stoking confusion and, in some cases, pushback from the courts.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan is the first to confront the Trump administration’s vacillating views about how far Trump intended to go. Varlan, a George W. Bush appointee, said the Trump administration’s “change in position” about the pardon required the courts to interpret the pardon for themselves. And in his view, Kelley’s crime was too far removed from the Jan. 6 riot to qualify.
Though Varlan’s ruling aligned with the Justice Department’s position on Kelley, it rejected the administration’s contention that courts have no role in analyzing Trump’s pardon. He noted that the Justice Department had advanced “differing positions” about the blanket pardon, which Trump issued on his first day in office and applied to more than 1,000 people who stormed the Capitol.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
These robed f**kwits are just bound and determined to bestow new meaning to the idea of a “hangin’ judge” aren’t they.
May the good Lord grant us the blessing of seeing them succeed beyond our worst expectations.
Agreed 100%!
For all of their hatred of DJT the left has learned nothing about him.
But they sure taught him a lot about them.
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