The Department of Justice acknowledged on May 23, 2026, that it had taken down news releases from its website that documented criminal cases arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, the Associated Press reported. The department described the removed material, which included details of charges, convictions, and sentencings of over 1,500 defendants, as “partisan propaganda.”
The removal is the latest action by President Donald Trump’s administration to recast the public historical record of the riot, when hundreds of his supporters breached the Capitol in an effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump, who returned to office in January 2025 after winning a second non‑consecutive term, acted swiftly on his first day back to pardon, commute the sentences of, or promise to dismiss the charges against every one of the people prosecuted in connection with the assault — including those convicted of attacking police officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick, and a crutch.
The Justice Department’s deletion of the news releases eliminates a public-facing archive of individual case details that had been accessible for more than four years. The AP first noticed that the previously available pages had become inaccessible, and a department spokesperson later confirmed the purges, characterizing the prosecutions as politically motivated.
The purge expands on a pattern of DOJ moves under Trump that have systematically undone the legal consequences of the Capitol breach. In April 2026, the department asked a federal court to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far‑right groups whose members were among the most prominent defendants from the riot. That request came after Trump’s sweeping clemency had already freed many of those convicted. The department also created a $1.776 billion “Anti‑Weaponization Fund” to compensate individuals the administration says were victims of politically driven prosecutions — a fund that Democrats and Capitol police officers have challenged as an improper payout to defendants, including those who assaulted law enforcement.
The erasure of the news releases removes a detailed, contemporaneous paper trail of the government’s own prosecutorial actions. The pages had listed the names of defendants, the charges they faced, the evidence presented at trial or in plea hearings, and the sentences imposed. Their removal means that information that was once part of the official public record is now only accessible through news reports, legal archives, and private databases.
The White House has separately signaled that it intends to rewrite the broader narrative of Jan. 6. Trump has repeatedly characterized those charged as “political prisoners” and has praised the rioters as “patriots.” His administration’s actions, including the department’s labeling of its own earlier press releases as propaganda, align with that framing.
The department did not specify how many releases were deleted, and it did not provide a list of the removed pages. The AP’s report noted that the Justice Department’s own page for news releases no longer contained links to any Jan. 6-related case filings or announcements.
The removal drew swift criticism from former federal prosecutors and congressional Democrats, who argued that erasing the public record undermines government transparency and diminishes accountability for the attack. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, called the purge “an Orwellian attempt to delete history” and vowed to push for preservation of the records through legislative means.
The department’s characterization of the prosecutions as propaganda marks a sharp rhetorical break with the office’s prior stance. Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department had described the Jan. 6 cases as one of the largest criminal investigations in American history and had regularly issued detailed news releases on the convictions and sentencings, emphasizing the seriousness of the offenses against democracy.
Legal experts note that while executive‑branch websites are routinely updated when administrations change, the wholesale removal of archived law‑enforcement press releases is unusual. Typically, federal agency sites retain historical materials, and the deletion of prosecutorial records raises questions about compliance with federal records‑keeping obligations. The National Archives and Records Administration has not commented on whether any preservation rules were triggered.