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Edward Kelley (images via FBI court filing).
The Justice Department is refusing to drop the conviction of a Jan. 6 rioter who was found guilty of plotting to kill the FBI agents who investigated him for his pardoned Capitol attack crimes, which included breaking in and assaulting a police officer.
Edward Kelley, 35, of Maryville, Tennessee, had previously tried claiming that his federal murder plot case was “related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” He filed a motion to dismiss his indictment and to vacate his jury convictions on Jan. 27, one week after President Donald Trump issued his pardons, to which Trump’s DOJ responded bluntly on Tuesday.
“The defendant is wrong,” wrote prosecutors in their response. “As both parties made explicitly clear to the Court and jury throughout litigation in this Court, this case is not about Jan. 6 … This case is about the defendant’s entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol: threatening, soliciting, and conspiring to murder agents, officers, and employees of the FBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Maryville Police Department, Blount County Sheriff’s Office, and Clinton Police Department.”
In November, Kelley was convicted in the Eastern District of Tennessee on charges of conspiracy to murder federal employees, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and influencing a federal official by threat following a three-day trial. He’s due to be sentenced in May, a little over a month after he was scheduled to be sentenced in his Jan. 6 case in Washington, D.C., before Trump’s pardons were handed down in an executive order.
“The plain language of the presidential Proclamation he cites forecloses the relief he seeks,” DOJ prosecutors said Tuesday. “Further, the defendant has identified no authority supporting his position that the Court should compel the United States’ dismissal pursuant to that Proclamation. His motion should be denied.”
In his Jan. 6 case, Kelley was found guilty of three felonies — including civil disorder, destruction of government property in an amount over $1,000 and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers — for storming the Capitol building and attacking a police officer. Evidence presented at a separate trial in Knoxville, Tennessee, showed how he “developed a plan to murder law enforcement” while his Jan. 6 charges and trial were pending. Prosecutors said Kelley compiled a “kill list” of FBI agents and employees who were probing him and his Jan. 6 conduct, which he then distributed to “conspirators,” along with images of the targets. They described how Kelley planned “assassination missions” for each of his targets and talked about them with others.
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“In late 2022, defendant Edward Kelley devised a plan to murder federal, state, and local law enforcement in East Tennessee,” DOJ prosecutors detailed in their response. “He drew up a list of the people he intended to assassinate … He solicited others to reconnoiter and murder them at their offices, near their homes, and in public places. He and his coconspirator made plans to attack the FBI using improvised explosive devices in vehicles and incendiary devices attached to drones.”
The Knoxville Joint Terrorism Task Force — composed of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies — was behind Kelley’s arrest, according to DOJ officials, with it being led by the FBI. During his trial, prosecutors played recordings of Kelley talking about taking a “course of action” for his murder plots, uttering phrases like “start it,” “attack,” and “take out their office.”
“Every hit has to hurt,” Kelley said in one recording.
DOJ prosecutors noted Tuesday how courts have already “reached the same conclusion for conduct separate in time or place” from Jan. 6 for at least two other rioters: Taylor Taranto and Dan Wilson.
Taranto, who allegedly threatened lawmakers and showed up to Barack Obama‘s home in Washington, D.C., in 2023 while toting guns, ammunition and supplies for an explosive device, asked to have his criminal charges for those incidents dropped earlier this month, saying Trump’s executive order pardoning Capitol attackers also covered his crimes, which he too deemed as being “related to” the 2021 insurrection. DOJ prosecutors refused to drop that case as well, and U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, sided with the DOJ, denying Taranto’s request last week.
Wilson, 49, was ordered on Feb. 7 to self-surrender to federal authorities to serve the remaining time of his five-year sentence for separate firearms convictions after he was erroneously released from prison following Trump’s pardon proclamation.
U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich, also a Trump appointee, rejected Wilson’s claim that the president’s pardon for his charge of conspiracy to impede or injure an officer at the Capitol also covered his separate convictions in Kentucky for possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of an unregistered firearm.
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In addition to precedent, DOJ prosecutors argued in their response Tuesday to Kelley’s request that he has identified “no legal basis” to support a dismissal.
“The defendant cites no authority for the proposition that the Court can … compel the Executive to dismiss more charges than it wishes to dismiss,” their response said. “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.”
Kelley is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison at sentencing, according to prosecutors.