A group calling itself “J6ers Were Destroyed by Weaponization” is asking a federal court to force Attorney General Todd Blanche to review and potentially throw out guilty pleas from January 6 defendants — and prosecutors in Jeanine Pirro’s U.S. Attorney’s office say the entire lawsuit should be tossed out.
The Trump administration has broadly tried to wipe the slate clean for the January 6 rioters, with the president granting them a mass pardon on his first day, and even toying with giving them payouts in a $1.8 billion slush fund — but they may have found one demand for January 6 handouts that goes too far.
The petitioner describes itself only as an unincorporated association of unnamed individuals prosecuted over the Capitol riot, arguing that charging decisions, pretrial detention, and sentencing threats coerced many of them into pleading guilty. The group wants a judge to order Blanche to review every plea tied to two specific federal charges, initiate motions to vacate or withdraw from those pleas, and launch investigations into the prosecutors and government informants involved in the original cases.
Prosecutors representing Blanche argue the request asks the court to do something it simply has no power to do.
“Mandamus cannot be used to control the Attorney General’s discretionary law enforcement and litigation decisions,” the government’s filing states, citing decades of precedent establishing that courts can’t force prosecutors to investigate, charge, or reverse course on cases already resolved.
The filing also picks apart the group’s legal standing, noting the petition never identifies who its members actually are, how many exist, or how the organization is run, undercutting its claim to sue on their behalf. Even if the court ordered DOJ to conduct the requested reviews and investigations, prosecutors argue, that alone wouldn’t erase any defendant’s existing guilty plea, since only the judges who originally accepted those pleas have authority to disturb them.
The government further argues the lawsuit’s request for a blanket declaration that certain categories of January 6 plea deals are “constitutionally infirm” amounts to exactly the kind of abstract advisory opinion federal courts are barred from issuing, since it wouldn’t bind any of the judges who actually presided over those cases.
Blanche’s office is asking the court to dismiss the case in its entirety, arguing the group failed to establish that it — or any of its unnamed members — has legal standing to bring the claims at all.
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