No. of Recommendations: 7
So it appears that the judges of the DC circuit are balking at dismissing the Jan 6 cases with prejudice.
Judge Chutkan:
The dismissal cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in it's wake.
In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.
Judge Howell:
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.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly:
Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truch, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.
What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded also cannot be altered or ignored. ... Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol ground and the Capitol Building -- our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world. More than 140 officers were injured. ... Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect.
All of what I have described has been recorded for posterity, ensuring that what transpired on January 6, 2021 can be judged accurately in the future.
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(back to me)
All three of these judges are refusing to dismiss with prejudice, as that is in their purview, not the executive's, in spite of Trump's order.
--Peter
Note: I don't have a PACER account. For anyone that does, the Chutkan comments are at 1:24-cr-00135-TSC. I don't have references for the others, but I'm sure they're available there.
