Rioters supporting President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File).
Certain Jan. 6 defendants who’ve had their cases “invalidated” and vacated by President Donald Trump‘s Justice Department deserve to get restitution refunds, the DOJ says — insisting Tuesday in a federal court filing that there’s “no longer any basis justifying the government’s retaining funds.”
Stacy Hager, an alleged rioter who was arrested in Texas, had been charged and convicted of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, according to his original DOJ complaint.
Trump’s mass pardon of Jan. 6 rioters recognized Hager as one of more than 1,500 defendants who have been granted clemency since the president took office for a second time in January. The DOJ said Tuesday that what makes Hager’s situation unique — as well as others who had similar convictions like his “invalidated” — is that he was “not just pardoned” but instead told that the government was flat-out vacating his case while it was still on appeal.
“Here, Hager’s conviction was ‘invalidated’ when the D.C. Circuit vacated it, and thus ‘there is no longer any basis justifying the government’s retaining funds exacted only as a result of that conviction,’” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Dreher in response to a motion filed by Hager on Feb. 28 for reimbursement of fines, fees and restitution.
“This Court subsequently dismissed the case as moot,” Dreher said. “The government thus agrees that, so long as the Clerk of Court confirms that Hager in fact made the special assessment and restitution payments he seeks to have returned, Hager is entitled to reimbursement of those payments.”
According to Hager’s original Jan. 6 complaint, federal investigators found that he was boasting about his participation in the 2021 Capitol attack on his Facebook page, even posting pictures and videos of himself trespassing, the DOJ said.
“Hager also posted words to the effect of, ‘it’s war, don’t go quietly,’” his complaint alleged.
“The publicly available information on the subject account showed, among other things, a photograph of Hager and an unidentified male on the lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol on January 6,” the document added. “Hager was wearing a ‘Trump’ baseball cap, a gray outer jacket, a dark navy or black colored coverall and appeared to be waving a Texas state flag, with the other male waving a United States flag.”
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The Tuesday filing by the DOJ comes after U.S. Attorney Ed Martin — the Trump administration’s top prosecutor in Washington, D.C. — has previously said that certain Jan. 6 defendants deserved “reparations” for how they’ve been treated by the government.
“I believe that everyone who has been targeted on January 6, they should get a big pot of money,” Martin explained during a podcast in January. “Like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims,” he said.
Martin, a conservative activist and 2020 election denier who previously served as the head of the Missouri Republican Party, said last week that he’s “expanded in scope” his office’s investigation into federal prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants under a felony obstruction statute, comparing them to Japanese Americans being sent to internment camps during World War II. Martin also announced that his office was probing alleged leaks that have emanated from the prosecutor’s office recently.
In an email to staff that was reviewed by Law&Crime, the interim U.S. Attorney for the nation’s capital announced that he would be continuing to “look at” how and why so many of the cases brought against alleged Jan. 6 rioters were charged using the obstruction statute 18 U.S. Code § 1512(c)(2), which involves charging an individual who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding” of Congress. Based on the statute, Martin dubbed the investigation “The 1512 Project.”
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After hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters were charged under the obstruction statute, the U.S. Supreme Court last year issued a 6-3 decision that narrowed its scope, holding that it did not apply as charged to those who stormed the Capitol; instead, the statute only barred obstruction of an official proceeding by tampering with evidence. Although the majority of judges for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the use of the charge in Jan. 6 cases, one — a Trump appointee — did not; that decision ultimately paved the way for the case to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Notably, the first charges under the statute brought against Jan. 6 rioters were filed Jan. 19, 2021, when Trump was still in office. Martin demoted several of his Washington, D.C., office’s senior leaders last month to handling low-level misdemeanors, reportedly as retribution for their work on prosecuting cases involving the president’s allies and Capitol rioters.
At the start of April, more than 100 former federal prosecutors signed onto a letter calling Martin an “egregiously unqualified political hack who has never served either as a prosecutor or judge,” imploring the Senate to reject his nomination.
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Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
