President Donald Trump’s pardon for people convicted of charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol does not extend to crimes “only connected to January 6 by the happenstance that it was uncovered during investigation of the unrelated January 6 offenses,” a federal appeals court ruled on April 2.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that rejected arguments from Dan Wilson, a Jan. 6 defendant who said that Trump’s relief should cover firearm convictions that stemmed from a search conducted as part of the probe into his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump on Jan. 20, when he took office for his second term, pardoned people for crimes “relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
“That language plainly applies to related offenses,” Circuit Judges Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Gregory G. Katsas said on Wednesday, in denying Wilson’s motion for release pending appeal.
Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, the third judge on the panel, dissented.
“Wilson’s appeal presents exceptional circumstances. He raises a novel question implicating the scope of the pardon power, which is vested exclusively in the President,” Rao said.
She noted that Trump issued the pardon but tasked the attorney general with administering and effectuating it by issuing certificates to relevant people. The U.S. Department of Justice has said in court filings that the pardon does cover Wilson’s firearm convictions.
“Wilson’s certificate merely repeats the language of the blanket pardon and does not specifically list his firearm convictions,” Rao said. “But nothing seems to preclude a new certificate from being issued that clarifies the scope of Wilson’s pardon. Because it is unlikely that the issuance of a certificate of pardon is judicially reviewable, there is at least a ’substantial question' whether we should defer to the Department of Justice when it claims the certificate it has issued applies to Wilson’s firearms convictions.”
The majority said in response that they were reviewing the scope of the pardon, not its validity.
“The pardon does not cover offenses wholly independent of events at the Capitol on January 6, even if uncovered during investigation of January 6 offenses,” they said.
“What matters is the relationship between the offenses. Wilson’s Kentucky firearm offenses are not ‘offenses related to events that occurred’ at the Capitol on January 6. They occurred at a different time and place, and the elements of these offenses—possession of an unlicensed firearm and the possession of firearms by a prohibited person—bear no relationship to conduct that occurred at the Capitol on January 6. Thus, by the plain terms of the Pardon, they are not covered.”
George Pallas, an attorney representing Wilson, told The Epoch Times in an email that “Illegal gang members from El Salvador have better luck than J6ers do in the DC courts.” He was referring to recent rulings blocking the Trump administration from deporting Tren de Aragua members and suspected members under Trump’s Alien Enemies Act declaration.
Wilson had been released shortly after Trump signed the proclamation, but Department of Justice officials later said he should have been kept in custody because the firearms crimes were not covered by Trump’s pardon.
Several weeks later, officials told the federal court in Washington that they were now of the view that the pardon did cover the crimes.
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich ruled in March that the convictions, which came in Kentucky after a search of Wilson’s home, were not covered by the pardon.
Friedrich said that Trump can still pardon Wilson for unrelated convictions but that he has not yet.
Pallas told The Epoch Times in an email after that ruling that Friedrich missed the point because “President Trump is in the courtroom speaking through his surrogate, the prosecutor.”
A different judge, at around the same time, declined to vacate the convictions of Edward Kelley, another Jan. 6 defendant who offered similar arguments against conspiracy and threat charges. Kelley has not appealed that ruling.
Also on Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida agreed to dismiss the convictions of another Jan. 6 defendant, Jeremy Brown, who was convicted of grenade and firearm possession in 2023. The judge overseeing the case cited how the Department of Justice moved to throw out the charges, referencing the pardon.
