Trump's January 6 pardon doesn't cover FBI murder plot conviction, judge rules
Source: The Guardian
Mon 10 Mar 2025 17.16 EDT
Last modified on Mon 10 Mar 2025 19.58 EDT
A man pardoned by Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection who also was convicted of plotting to kill federal agents investigating him is still legally liable for the plot, a judge ruled on Monday. Edward Kelley was pardoned by the president for his role in the US Capitol riot, but he remained in prison on separate charges. The Tennessee man had developed a “kill list” of FBI agents who had investigated him for the Capitol attack.
On his first day in office, Trump issued pardons and commutations to more than 1,500 people convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection, including militia members. But other rioters had separate charges that the courts and the justice department are working through.
In Kelley’s case, the justice department argued he was not pardoned by Trump for the plotting charges. In Monday’s ruling, the US district judge Thomas Varlan deniedKelley’s motion to dismiss the charges, saying the case “involved separate offense conduct that was physically, temporally, and otherwise unrelated to defendant’s conduct in the D.C. Case and/or events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021”.
The plotting charges stemmed from “entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol”, Varlan wrote.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/10/january-6-pardon-fbi-murder-plot
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