Judge reluctantly dismisses case against Oath Keepers militia group over Jan. 6 riot

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, attends a hearing with the House Select Subcommittee on January 6th in January 2026 in Washington, D.C. Heather Diehl/Getty Images hide caption

A federal judge has reluctantly dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group and several other key members, after the Justice Department backed away from the landmark prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta had sentenced Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison, calling him "an ongoing threat and peril to this country."

Juries convicted Rhodes and five other Oath Keepers of attempting to overthrow the government using force, contributing to the violence and the chaos as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol six years ago. But the Trump Justice Department moved to wipe away those convictions, and eventually to drop the case altogether.

The dismissal of the Oath Keepers case marks one of the final codas to efforts to hold people accountable for the violent siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by a mob of President Trump's supporters.

On his first day in office, the president pardoned nearly every defendant charged in connection with the Capitol riot, which Judge Mehta described as an assault on the peaceful transfer of power.

"Today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle," the judge wrote in an Aug. 4 order .

In a social media post, James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, congratulated the defendants.