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Background: Photo of Cynthia Ballenger and her husband Christopher Price at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (Justice Department). Left inset: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, June 22, 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right inset: Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia).
Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has rebuffed a request from a Maryland couple who asked for roughly $1,000 in restitution to be returned to them now that they have been pardoned by President Donald Trump for taking part in the 2021 Capitol attack.
The rejection came Monday, just days after another judge in Washington, D.C. — U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss — swatted down a pardoned Jan. 6 defendant and former U.S. Marine who had asked for a refund, and roughly a month after Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said no to a similar request from Utah defendant John Sullivan.
“The court need not embark on a lengthy exegesis of this issue because it agrees with and adopts in full the analysis of Judge Randolph Moss of this district, who has just reached the same outcome in an identically postured case,” Boasberg explained Monday in a brief two-page order to defendants Cynthia Ballenger and her husband Christopher Price.
“Although the government agrees that return is appropriate, the court does not and will deny the Motion,” Boasberg said.
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Ballenger and Price filed a motion asking for a refund on their restitution on March 14, claiming they had previously “had no choice but to comply with the court”s restitution and assessment orders” under a threat of additional penalties and enforcement actions. The couple had asked for refund payments in the amount of $570 each.
“Defendants were not voluntary payors; they acted under legal compulsion,” the motion said. “To allow the government to retain these funds following vacatur, when there is no longer a lawful obligation, is inconsistent with fundamental fairness and due process.”
In his ruling Monday, Boasberg cited arguments made in the case that had been before Moss, United States v. Santos, rejecting a request from Jan. 6 defendant Hector Vargas Santos, 29, of Jersey City, New Jersey, for a similar refund following the mass pardons.
In his order, Moss brought up the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Knote v. United States, which described a pardon as “an act of grace” that does not restore “rights or property once vested in others in consequence of the conviction and judgment,” per the 1877 ruling. “Because Santos’ payments were collected while his convictions were ‘in force,’ the funds were not ‘erroneously collected’ and are therefore not refundable,” Moss said.
Following his 2023 conviction, Santos was ordered to pay a $70 mandatory special assessment — much like Ballenger and Price — and $500 in restitution to the Architect of the Capitol and a $2,500 fine. He paid a total of $2,026.19, including $1,456.19 toward that fine, before Trump issued his sweeping pardons earlier this year.
Boasberg noted Monday how Moss denied Santos’ request for a refund of his restitution as well as the fine.
“There, too, the restitution was awarded to the Architect of the Capitol,” Boasberg said, adding that the government “also concurred” in that request as well.
Quoting Moss directly, Boasberg agreed that “Knote made clear” that a pardoned individual is not “entitled” to payments that have already been deposited into the United States Treasury, “absent congressional authorization to withdraw the funds.”
Boasberg and Moss are both Barack Obama appointees, while Lamberth was put on the federal bench by Ronald Regan in 1987.
