Trump DOJ obtained court vacatur of Proud Boys leaders' January 6 seditious conspiracy convictions

On July 10, 2026, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted a U.S. Department of Justice motion to dismiss and vacate the criminal convictions of four Proud Boys members who had been prosecuted for their roles in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The order erased the seditious-conspiracy convictions that a jury had returned in 2023 against Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl, along with the convictions of a fourth member, Dominic Pezzola, who had been found guilty of other felonies including assaulting officers and obstruction.

Kelly, a first-term Trump nominee to the federal bench, wrote in a memorandum that the government's request was not grounded in the facts or the law, and he underscored that the underlying conduct involved serious crimes committed during an attack on the constitutional transfer of power. He nonetheless concluded that he was bound to grant the motion, stating that no one should mistake the court's action for agreement with the government's position.

The vacatur went further than the clemency Trump granted on January 20, 2025, which commuted or pardoned January 6 defendants but left the underlying jury convictions on the record. By moving the sentencing court to dismiss and vacate the verdicts outright, the Justice Department used its prosecutorial authority to formally undo convictions secured against political allies of the president.