Three weeks ago, the Justice Department was emphatic: Donald Trump may have pardoned Kentuckian Dan Wilson for crimes he committed at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but that pardon
did not extend to his unrelated conviction for illegally storing firearms at his home.
Then, on Tuesday, the U.S. attorneyās office in Washington
reversed course, saying it had āreceived further clarityā about Trumpās true intent, which included pardoning Wilson for the gun case. Prosecutors did not explain how they arrived at this new āclarity.ā
The abrupt reversal prompted a federal judge ā now weighing Wilsonās last-minute effort to avoid prison for the gun conviction ā to demand answers from the Trump administration on Wednesday: Who exactly did Trump mean to pardon when he signed his sweeping clemency order last month, and for what crimes?
During a two-hour hearing in her federal courtroom, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich ā a Trump appointee ā grilled a Justice Department attorney about the matter and appeared to leave with more questions than answers. And Wilsonās freedom is in the balance: Heās slated to report to prison unless Friedrich agrees to stop the sentence.
At the heart of the controversy is
the vague language of Trumpās mass pardons for Jan. 6 rioters. He granted clemency to anyone āconvicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.ā
Jan. 6 defendants have repeatedly argued that the language is so broad it covers other crimes that have nothing to do with Jan. 6 but were discovered during the vast criminal probe stemming from the Capitol attack. But Trump himself did not speak to that issue when he signed the executive proclamation issuing the pardons, and it has left his own administration and the courts struggling to divine what was in his head the moment his pen touched the order on Jan. 20.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Blackwell said the departmentās understanding of Trumpās pardon had evolved in recent weeks ā but she did not say how or why. She said this shift was the reason the Justice Department had moved in recent days to
drop a slew of other cases against Jan. 6 defendants who were on the hook for other federal felonies. They included Jeremy Brown, who was serving a seven-year sentence in Florida for possessing grenades and classified information; Elias Costianes, who was serving a two-year sentence for possessing illegal guns and drugs; and Daniel Ball, a repeat offender facing firearms charges in Florida.
The common thread, Blackwell told Friedrich, was that those convictions were the result of FBI searches conducted as part of the Jan. 6 investigation. That makes them ārelated toā the Capitol riot, under the terms of Trumpās pardon, and those crimes would not have been discovered were it not for the Jan. 6 probe, the prosecutor said.
But when Friedrich pressed, Blackwell acknowledged that there were exceptions to the Justice Departmentās new interpretation. For example, she said, a North Carolina man
charged with possessing child pornography was not covered. Thatās because authorities had suspected the man, David Daniel, of exploiting a minor prior to the Jan. 6 investigation. A Tennessee man convicted of conspiring to kill his Jan. 6 investigators was
not intended to be covered either, Blackwell said, because his conspiracy was āa separate plotā devised long after the Capitol attack.
Friedrich pressed further with a hypothetical: If evidence emerged later that connected a Jan. 6 defendant to a murder, would the defendant be pardoned of that crime under DOJās interpretation? Blackwell couldnāt answer.
āThatās just extraordinary,ā Friedrich said of the potential breadth of Trumpās pardon to offenses unrelated to Jan. 6.
It prompted Friedrich to raise concerns that the interpretation of Trumpās pardon by his administration appeared to be a shifting target that was not apparent in the language of Trumpās proclamation itself.
āIt canāt be the case that a pardon can be issued in vague terms and months later, the president can make a determination of what it means,ā Friedrich said. āItās not my job to craft the pardon language.ā
Friedrich also seemed to catch an error in the governmentās position, noting that authorities had evidence that Brown possessed classified information long before Jan. 6. That fact seems to put Brown in a similar position as Daniel ā yet the Justice Department has argued that Brown is covered by the pardon while Daniel is not.
The judge grew increasingly exasperated as she asked the Justice Department to explain āthe presidentās intentā when he issued the pardon. But Blackwell and Wilsonās attorney, George Pallas, told the judge she had virtually no role in interpreting the pardon at all. The Justice Department, acting on Trumpās behalf, would simply tell her what it means.
But Friedrich said she viewed it as her job to accept only a āreasonableā interpretation of Trumpās pardon, and given the justice Departmentās shifting explanations, she had not yet decided whether to grant Wilson a reprieve from his five-year prison sentence. She said the Justice Department could send her clarifying language by 5 p.m. Wednesday before she issued an opinion.
