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Left: Daniel Edwin Wilson is seen in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (U.S. Attorney’s Office). Right: Dabney Friedrich, speaks during the U.S. Sentencing Commission meeting in December 2007 (AP Photo/Stephen J. Boitano).
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected the Trump administration’s assertion that the president’s blanket pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack also applied to crimes outside of what happened at the Capitol that day.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of Donald Trump, on Thursday refused to accept that the president’s pardon of Capitol rioter Daniel Edwin Wilson extended to unrelated federal gun charges that Wilson pleaded guilty to in 2022, reasoning that the crime was outside the scope of the “clear and unambiguous” terms of the pardon.
Friedrich’s 19-page order marks the first time a federal judge has unequivocally refuted the Justice Department’s newly adopted position that the pardons covered the Jan. 6, attack as well as “offenses that were charged as a result of search warrants conducted as part of the January 6, 2021 investigation, for which the government did not have pre-existing evidence related to similar offenses.”
The judge wrote that the pardon “only applies” to offenses “related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” meaning it is “tethered to a specific place and time.”
“Contrary to the pardon’s plain language and structure, the parties’ reading of the pardon conflates offenses discovered during the January 6 investigations with offenses that occurred at or near the Capitol on January 6,” Friedrich wrote. “Because Wilson’s Kentucky firearm offenses bear no relationship to the events that occurred at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, they are not covered by the plain language of the Presidential Pardon.”
Wilson entered the Capitol that day wearing a gas mask and walked through the Rotunda and Statuary Hall before exiting at 2:49 p.m. He was inside for just over 10 minutes.
On June 3, 2022, law enforcement executing a search warrant at Wilson’s Kentucky home in connection with the Jan. 6 attack seized six firearms stored in a backpack and cabinet. He was arrested on May 25, 2023, almost a year after the federal search warrant was executed on his home.
“Wilson was prohibited from possessing firearms at the time, due to previous felony convictions,” the probable cause affidavit notes. “At least two of the seized firearms were loaded at the time of seizure, and another two did not have serial numbers.”
Last year, Wilson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to impede or injure federal law enforcement officers in connection with the Capitol riot as well as one count each of possession of an unregistered firearm and being a felon in possession. He was sentenced to 60 months on each charge, to be served concurrently.
Following Trump’s issuing of some 1,500 blanket pardons, Wilson challenged his incarceration on the gun charges. Initially, the DOJ vehemently opposed Wilson’s argument, but in late February, prosecutors did an about-face, telling the court that new directives indicated that Trump meant for Wilson to be set free.
“In the intervening period since the government filed its response, the government has received further clarity on the intent of the pardon,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. “Under these circumstances, the Presidential Pardon includes a pardon for the firearm convictions to which the defendant pled, similar to other defendants in which the government has made comparable motions.”
But Friedrich did not allow it, writing that application of Trump’s pardon to “any type of offense — no matter when or where that offense was committed — simply because evidence of that offense was uncovered incident to a January 6-related search warrant would ‘defy rationality.””
“In any case, the Department’s inconsistent litigating positions and its unwillingness (and perhaps inability) to express a clear and stable interpretation of the pardon leads the Court to conclude that its current position is a ‘post hoc justification adopted in response to litigation,’” she wrote. “Because the Department’s latest interpretation of the Presidential Pardon lacks a reasoned basis and is not a fair and considered judgment of the pardon’s scope, the Court accords no deference to the Department’s current litigating position.”
Friedrich noted that Trump could issue a proclamation explaining the scope of his pardons, but “did not do so here.”
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