President Trump’s handpicked acting D.C. U.S. Attorney insisted Friday afternoon that a federal judge should rescind his own order from Friday morning barring recently released Oath Keepers from going to D.C. and, specifically, the U.S. Capitol.
Acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, a Missouri political operative, three time-failed candidate and activist on behalf of Jan. 6 defendants who Trump appointed to the office this week, raced to file a tersely worded motion that reads more like a directive to the judge than a request to the court.
In asking U.S. District Judge Ahmit Mehta for the District of Columbia to rescind his order, Martin said that President Trump’s commutation of the sentences of the Oath Keepers found guilty of seditious conspiracy covered all aspects of their sentences and left the judge with no power to impose restrictions on their release.
No Assistant U.S. attorney, the line prosecutors who handle criminal cases, signed onto the incredibly unusual order.
In an even larger break, Martin blasted out a statement to reporters accompanying the filing that seemed to threaten Trump critics.
“If a judge decided that Jim Biden, General Mark Milley, or another individual were forbidden to visit America’s capital—even after receiving a last-minute, preemptive pardon from the former President—I believe most Americans would object. The individuals referenced in our motion have had their sentences commuted – period, end of sentence,” Martin said in the statement.
TPM reported earlier on Friday that Oath Keeper attorneys were either confused about or skeptical of whether the Trump commutations applied to the terms of supervised release that their clients had received. For Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, those conditions stated that he cannot consume extremist media or speak with members of extremist groups, presenting possible impediments to any plans he might have to jump back into his now-largely-degraded organization.
Nine Oath Keepers and five Proud Boys members received commutations, while all other January 6 defendants received pardons. Trump’s commutation order only covered the “sentence,” and, unlike other commutations that explicitly limit terms of probation, the 14 January 6 defendants’ commutations do not specify anything else.
This led to consternation among Oath Keeper lawyers, with some suggesting that whoever drafted the commutations for Trump may have made an error.
Error or not, Martin is effectively asking Mehta to do what the commutation does not: remove the last remnants of federal criminal oversight from the Oath Keepers, allowing them to run free and potentially reconstitute their organization.
“The defendants, however, are no longer subject to the terms of supervised release and probation, as the Executive Order ‘commute(d) the sentences’ of these defendants,” Martin argued in his filing. “As the terms of supervised release and probation are included in the ‘sentences’ of the defendants, the Court may not modify the terms of supervised release; the term is no longer active by effect of the Executive Order.”
The commutation itself does not say that it affects terms of supervised release; legal experts told TPM that such orders have to specify what they do into order to enter into legal force.
