Recently released January 6, 2021 insurrectionists are trying to argue that their presidential pardons should apply to separate crimes they were charged with while they were being investigated for storming the Capitol, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Edward Kelley, who was pardoned after assaulting police at the Capitol, is also hoping to overturn a conviction for conspiring to murder FBI agents who investigated him, forming a “kill list.” He allegedly planned to use drones to bomb the FBI’s Knoxville, Tennessee, branch, and thinks that conviction should be thrown out.
“In this instance, there can be no dispute that Kelley’s case in this court is related to the events of January 6th and is covered by the President’s executive action,” his lawyer Mark Brown wrote in a motion on January 27.
Fellow rioter Andrew Taake, who served six months in prison for spraying officers at the Capitol with bear spray, was released from prison on January 27 even though he still had outstanding charges for solicitation of a minor in 2016. It took Houston police more than a week to track him down.
The lawyer for David Daniel, who is facing child pornography charges, stated that “pretty much all” of the evidence of his client’s pornography crimes stemmed from Daniel’s house being raided due to his January 6 involvement, which, the attorney argues, means those charges should be null and void since he was pardoned for his actions on January 6 four years ago.
“Anything that flowed from that case, given the pardon, should be excluded and inadmissible at trial,” Daniel’s lawyer William Terpening told the Journal.
This is a frightening line of argument—a literal get-out-of-jail-free card for dangerous, vindictive people who already got one from President Trump. Time will only tell how their unearned reintegration into society will impact the country if their requests are granted
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