The U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged it had removed from its website news releases describing criminal cases tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, and said the removed information amounted to “partisan propaganda.” The department’s website purge, according to the Justice Department’s response, formed part of what it characterized as an effort to reverse what it described as the previous administration’s “weaponization” of prosecutions tied to the Capitol riot.
The department’s move followed a Friday observation on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” taking down related releases, including one about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and faced separate state charges involving a minor. In its reply through its “rapid response” account, the Justice Department said there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it” and asserted it was stripping the DOJ’s website of “partisan propaganda.”
In the department’s account, the purge targeted releases that had documented criminal charges, convictions and sentencings involving defendants tied to the Capitol riot. The Justice Department described the change as part of a broader rewrite of the public record, and it placed the action in the context of the Trump administration’s early steps after returning to power.
The AP report said that Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, pardoned or commuted sentences, or pledged to dismiss cases, for more than 1,500 people charged for crimes connected to the Capitol assault. That included people convicted of attacking law enforcement officers using makeshift weapons, the report said, citing examples including a flagpole, a hockey stick and a crutch.
The Justice Department’s moves have also extended into litigation and appeals. The AP report said the department sought an appeals court vacatur of seditious conspiracy convictions involving members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, describing those groups as far-right extremist organizations. The report said the request was granted Thursday after the government filed an unopposed motion.
After the Thursday vacatur, the report said the Justice Department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members. This action echoed a developing pattern in the DOJ’s litigation strategy in which it asked courts to undo key convictions—an approach MSI previously reported when the department sought to toss Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convictions in April.
Alongside the legal developments, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund aimed at compensating Trump allies who say they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the report said, had not ruled out that rioters convicted of violence could qualify for payouts, drawing bipartisan anger in Congress.
The AP report did not provide details on how Congress responded or what the department’s fund rules would be, but it characterized the question of whether violence convictions would be eligible as a point of dispute. The Justice Department’s competing framing—vacating convictions while creating a compensation mechanism—has raised questions about how the government is treating the legal record of Jan. 6 prosecutions, even as it described its actions as reversing prior “weaponization.”