A man pardoned by Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection who also was convicted of plotting to kill federal agents investigating him is still legally liable for the plot, a judge ruled on Monday.
Edward Kelley was pardoned by the president for his role in the US Capitol riot, but he remained in prison on separate charges. The Tennessee man had developed a “kill list” of FBI agents who had investigated him for the Capitol attack.
On his first day in office, Trump issued pardons and commutations to more than 1,500 people convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection, including militia members. But other rioters had separate charges that the courts and the justice department are working through.
In Kelley’s case, the justice department argued he was not pardoned by Trump for the plotting charges. In Monday’s ruling, the US district judge Thomas Varlan deniedKelley’s motion to dismiss the charges, saying the case “involved separate offense conduct that was physically, temporally, and otherwise unrelated to defendant’s conduct in the D.C. Case and/or events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021”.
The plotting charges stemmed from “entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol”, Varlan wrote.
Prosecutors allege Kelley – who was the fourth rioter to enter the Capitol on January 6 and was carrying a gun – was developing a plan to murder law enforcement agents. They produced recordings of his planning activity, including Kelley giving instructions to “start it”, “attack”, and “take out their office”.
“Every hit has to hurt,” he allegedly says in one recording.
A cooperating defendant testified against Kelley and said he and Kelley were planning to attack the FBI field office in Knoxville with car bombs and drones, and were strategizing over how to assassinate FBI employees at their homes or in public places.
While most participants in the events of January 6 who were in prison have been released, some are still inside because of other charges, both related and unrelated to the Capitol riot. It is not yet clear what will happen to some rioters who were charged with gun crimes during searches of their homes when authorities were serving January 6 warrants.
