President Donald Trump’s pardons for people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol do not cover a man’s 2024 conviction for plotting to kill FBI agents, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers said on Feb. 18.
“The defendant’s conduct in this case was unrelated in both time and place to the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” the lawyers said in a filing that opposes Edward Kelley’s motion to vacate his convictions and dismiss the charges against him.
While Kelley, of Tennessee, was convicted in 2024 of charges including assaulting law enforcement officers during the breach, he was separately accused in 2022 of conspiring to murder FBI agents and convicted in that case in 2024.
Trump on Jan. 20 pardoned some 1,500 individuals, including Kelley. A proclamation said that he granted pardons for offenses “relating to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Lawyers for Kelley told a federal judge in Tennessee after Trump’s announcement that the case involving the plot to kill FBI agents “is unmistakably ‘related to’ his charges in Washington, D.C. and covered by his Presidential pardon.”
That’s because both cases were led by the same FBI agent, the lawyers said. They also argued that Kelley would never have been able to develop a so-called hit list if he had not been provided unredacted discovery documents in the Jan. 6 case identifying FBI personnel.
DOJ lawyers, however, said that view was wrong, in part due to Kelley’s actions taking place nearly two years later and in a different part of the country.
“Based on the unambiguous language of the Proclamation—and after consultation with officials in the Department of Justice—the United States opposes the defendant’s motion for dismissal,” they said on Tuesday. “The Attorney General has administered and effected the President’s Proclamation. The defendant’s D.C. Case has been dismissed. The Proclamation does not provide any relief as to the defendant’s crimes in Tennessee. This case should not be dismissed, and the defendant should be sentenced as scheduled.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan is overseeing the case and will decide on Kelley’s motion at some point in the future.
Kelley is not the only person charged over Jan. 6 who faces charges in a separate case.
Following Trump’s pardon in January, Daniel Ball was arrested in prison on charges of illegal gun and ammunition possession. Ball’s lawyers have said they think the charges should be dismissed because they stem from a search warrant executed in the Jan. 6 case.
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