On the last day of federal court before the Trump administration begins, the judge who presided over the president-elect’s now-dismissed criminal January 6, 2021, case told a defendant who admitted to disorderly conduct that day that he may be the last Capitol rioter she’ll sentence. If Trump grants blanket pardons, expected at least for nonviolent offenders charged in the Capitol siege, the judiciary’s role in overseeing the cases would end immediately. If Trump were to pardon violent offenders and seditious conspirators, those who are serving prison time could be released from federal custody, CNN reports. “This may be, depending upon what happens outside these walls, the last one of these,” Judge Tanya Chutkan told defendant Brian Leo Kelly who also pleaded guilty to a second misdemeanor charge, trespassing inside the Capitol.
Others sentenced Friday included Kellye SoRelle, who was convicted of obstructing justice by encouraging the Oath Keepers over text to delete their January 6 plans; a pair of brothers who violently assaulted police at the Capitol; a man who broke down one of the original, 171-year-old wooden doors in the Senate; and two men who separately sprayed police guarding the Capitol complex with chemical irritants. Chutkan sentenced Kelly to 10 days in jail plus probation, community service and a restitution payment. She allowed him to walk out of the courtroom and voluntarily surrender at a later date if he is not pardoned. Kelly is among the nonviolent January 6 defendants who walked through the Capitol halls, the air hazy from chemical irritants, filming on his cellphone and “taking photos as souvenirs,” prosecutors said. “You became part of the effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Chutkan told him. “I hope we never have something like this happen in this country. Before January 6, I didn’t think it could happen. It exposed such serious cracks in our democracy.”
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