WASHINGTON — What will happen to the hundreds of Jan. 6 criminal cases still pending after former President Donald Trump’s apparent victory at the polls Tuesday?
At the federal courthouse in D.C. on Wednesday, the answer, at least for now, was business as usual. A hearing on the sixth floor about a North Carolina man’s Jan. 6 trial scheduled next week limited itself mostly to discussions of what facts the parties would agree to, with no mention of the election. Four floors down, in the chief judge’s courtroom, another riot defendant agreed to set their own trial date in May.
One Jan. 6 defendant did broach the subject in an effort to continue a hearing later this week, albeit unsuccessfully. His motion filed early in the day to postpone a status conference until December – based partly on the premise that Trump has promised to pardon Capitol riot defendants – was swiftly denied. The defendant, Christopher Carnell, of North Carolina, was ordered to appear as scheduled for a hearing on Friday.
Carnell and a co-defendant were convicted in a stipulated bench trial earlier this year of one felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding and several misdemeanors. That felony conviction was vacated last month following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the statute this summer. Federal prosecutors and Carnell’s attorney, Marina Medvin, disagree about whether the Justice Department should be able to bring Carnell back to trial on the obstruction count.
Carnell and his co-defendant had been scheduled to be sentenced this week, but U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell converted that to a status hearing after vacating the felony conviction. On Wednesday, Medvin asked Howell to vacate the hearing as well, arguing, among other things, that with Trump’s apparent win, there may be no need for a sentencing at all.
“Mr. Carnell, who was an 18-year-old nonviolent entrant into the Capitol on January 6, is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office,” Medvin wrote in her motion.
In the months after the Capitol riot, Trump initially seemed keen on distancing himself from the events of the day. He gradually warmed to publicly supporting the defendants charged in connection with the riot, however, eventually referring to them as “J6 patriots” and promising at various times to consider pardoning them. As recently as September, Trump said during a rally in Wisconsin that he planned to “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime.”
During an interview with Time Magazine in April, Trump said he would “absolutely” consider pardoning every Jan. 6 defendant – although he quickly couched that response.
“If somebody was evil and bad, I would look at that differently,” he said.
While the vast majority of Jan. 6 cases involve no allegations of violence, Trump has never been clear whether his pardon plans also include those accused or convicted of assaulting police. Among those defendants are Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania man with a lengthy prior criminal history dating back to 1991 who was sentenced to 14 years in prison on four separate counts of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon, and Daniel Rodriguez, an ardent Trump fan from California who drove a stun gun multiple times in to the neck of DC Police Officer Michael Fanone while he was being restrained by other rioters.
At his sentencing hearing, Rodriguez’s federal public defender said he “trusted Trump blindly” and quoted a passage from Fanone’s book describing Rodriguez as an “easy mark for a cult.”
As he was being led out of court after being sentenced last year, Rodriguez yelled emphatically, “Trump won!”
WUSA9 reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia on Wednesday to learn what, if any, effect the election would have on the office’s charging decisions in the remaining months of President Joe Biden’s term. Incoming presidents routinely replace all or nearly all U.S. attorneys in the country, and a Trump Justice Department would not be expected to prioritize prosecuting new Jan. 6 cases. The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately provide a response to WUSA9’s questions.
Trump’s own federal cases, both the pending D.C. case linked to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the case that was dismissed by a federal judge in Florida related to national security documents found at Mar-a-Lago, are likely dead in the water with Tuesday’s results. An election-related case in Georgia against Trump was also likely to find itself unable to proceed, at least as far as the charges against him are concerned. And any period of incarceration is almost certainly off the table for a New York judge set to sentence him later this month in his Manhattan hush money case.
Back in federal court in D.C., cases continued as usual Wednesday. Attorneys for the government and Isabella DeLuca, a conservative influencer charged with several misdemeanors in connection with the riot, provided Chief Judge James Boasberg with a routine update and agreed to set a trial date in May. DeLuca’s attorney, former Republican Florida House of Representatives member Anthony Sabatini, didn’t bring up the election results or ask for any additional time. He said he and DeLuca were still considering a plea offer from the government but gave no indication they intended to accept it.
“So, we’ll set a date and if you reject the plea offer we’ll go to trial?” Boasberg asked.
Sabatini appeared to pause and consider for a moment before responding, “That’ll be fine your honor.”
In the 46 months since the attack on the U.S. Capitol, more than 1,500 defendants have now been charged. Nearly 1,200 have now pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.