“No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified," Judge Beryl Howell wrote.
https://bsky.app/profile/democracyblue.bsky.social/post/3lgg2xzxrdc2x
Judge: Jan. 6 pardons ‘will not change the truth of what happened’
“No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified," Judge Beryl Howell wrote.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/judge-jan-6-pardons-will-not-change-truth-happened-rcna188909
Within hours of his presidential inauguration, Donald Trump issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 criminals — including violent felons who were in prison for assaulting police officers — sparking ample conversation among elected officials, pundits, prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel.
But they’re not the only ones with notable perspectives. As The New York Times reported, some members of the judiciary shared some thoughts of their own.
No one knows more about the hundreds of criminal cases filed against rioters who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol than the federal judges in Washington who oversaw their trials and guilty pleas, watched thousands of hours of surveillance videos and heard hundreds of witnesses deliver firsthand accounts of the attack. On Wednesday, two days after President Trump granted sweeping reprieves to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack, some of the judges started to push back against his moves, declaring that nothing — not even a presidential decree — could alter the reality of what happened that day.
Of particular interest was U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, who was responding to Trump’s Justice Department moving to dismiss indictments against two admitted Jan. 6 criminals. In fact, the defendants in the case freely acknowledged that they threw smoke bombs at police officers, breached the U.S. Capitol, defaced the building, and even stole equipment from law enforcement personnel during the riot.....
Howell made clear that she knew better.
“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” she explained. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a ‘national injustice’ is the sole justification provided in the government’s motion to dismiss the pending indictment.
“Having presided over scores of criminal cases charging defendants for their criminal conduct both outside and inside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, which charges were fully supported by evidence in the form of extensive videotapes and photographs, admissions by defendants in the course of plea hearings and in testimony at trials, and the testimony of law enforcement officers and congressional staff present at the Capitol on that day, this Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement. The prosecutions in this case and others charging defendants for their criminal conduct at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, present no injustice, but instead reflect the diligent work of conscientious public servants, including prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and dedicated defense attorneys, to defend our democracy and rights and preserve our long tradition of peaceful transfers of power — which, until January 6, 2021, served as a model to the world — all while affording those charged every protection guaranteed by our Constitution and the criminal justice system.
“As to these two defendants specifically, both admitted their criminal conduct under oath, after consultation with their attorneys, and pursuant to plea agreements to which they agreed. Bluntly put, the assertion offered in the presidential pronouncement for the pending motion to dismiss is flatly wrong.”.....
In recent years, a great many federal jurists — U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, among others — have addressed the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol with great eloquence and historical weight. The criminal cases are ending, but that recent tradition continues
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