News

Justice Dept. Takes Broad View of Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons

Published

1 year ago

February 25, 2025

Justice Dept. Takes Broad View of Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons

Four years ago, when F.B.I. agents searched the Florida home of Jeremy Brown, a former Special Forces soldier, in connection with his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they found several illegal items: an unregistered assault rifle, two live fragmentation grenades and a classified “trip report” that Mr. Brown wrote while he was in the Army.

Mr. Brown was ultimately tried in Tampa on charges of illegally possessing the weapons and the classified material. And after he was convicted, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison — even before his Jan. 6 indictment had a chance to go in front of a jury.

On Tuesday, however, federal prosecutors abruptly declared that because the second case was related to Jan. 6, it was covered by the sprawling clemency proclamation that President Trump issued on his first day in office to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.

And if a judge eventually agrees with that assessment, it could mean that Mr. Brown — whose Jan. 6 charges were already wiped out by the presidential pardon — will get to go free on his other case as well.

The Justice Department’s position with regard to Mr. Brown is not the first time it has said in recent days that separate criminal cases emerging from the investigation of Jan. 6 — especially those involving weapons discovered during searches — should be covered by Mr. Trump’s sweeping reprieves.

Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, advanced that view on Tuesday in the case of another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson.

Mr. Wilson, a Kentucky-based militiaman, pleaded guilty last spring to charges of conspiring to impede or injure officers at the Capitol. And as part of his plea, he also admitted to possessing illegal weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition that were discovered during a search of his home as he was being investigated in connection with Jan. 6.

Just two weeks ago, Mr. Martin rejected the notion that the weapons charges were covered by Mr. Trump’s pardon. But he suddenly reversed himself this week, writing in a court filing that he had “received further clarity on the intent of the presidential pardon.”

“Under these circumstances,” Mr. Martin said, “the presidential pardon includes a pardon for the firearm convictions to which the defendant pled.”

Mr. Trump’s clemency proclamation says that anyone charged with or convicted of “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” should either receive a pardon or have their case dismissed. And the Justice Department has increasingly taken the position that criminal behavior discovered during an investigation stemming from a suspect’s role in the Capitol attack is in fact related to Jan. 6.

Last week, for instance, the same U.S. attorney who handled Mr. Brown’s case moved to dismiss gun charges against another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Charles Ball. Only three days after Mr. Trump granted him clemency, Mr. Ball had been rearrested on an indictment accusing him of illegally possessing a firearm seized during a search of his home while he was being investigated for his Jan. 6 case.

In a similar fashion, federal prosecutors in Maryland asked a judge last Wednesday to release from prison Elias Costianes, a drug dealer who pleaded guilty in 2023 to illegally possessing a firearm even as he was awaiting trial on his Jan. 6-related charges.

Mr. Costianes recently began serving a two-year sentence on the weapons offense, but prosecutors have now sought to free him.

“After consulting with the Department of Justice’s leadership, the United States has concluded that the president pardoned Mr. Costianes of the offenses in the indictment,” a federal prosecutor wrote in court papers to a federal appeals court that Mr. Costianes had asked to let him go. “He should be immediately released from custody.”

The Justice Department has at times drawn lines, taking the view that not every crime committed by a pardoned Jan. 6 defendant is covered by Mr. Trump’s clemency decree.

Prosecutors, for example, have said they are unwilling to extend the pardon to a second case brought against Edward Kelley, a rioter from Tennessee who was convicted in November of plotting to assassinate the F.B.I. agents and police officers who investigated his Jan. 6-related case.

Mr. Kelley’s murder plot conviction, prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week, was simply not related to the Capitol attack.

“This case is about the defendant’s entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol,” they said.

Mr. Martin’s office in Washington is also sticking — at least for the moment — by its plans to prosecute a pardoned rioter named Taylor Taranto. In June 2023, Mr. Taranto was arrested near the home of former President Barack Obama and the police found a cache of weapons, ammunition and materials that could be used to make explosives in his van.

Last month, following the instructions laid out in Mr. Trump’s pardon proclamation, Mr. Martin dismissed all of the Jan. 6-related charges Mr. Taranto faced. But he declined to drop the weapons offenses stemming from events two years ago, even though all of the charges were contained in the same indictment.

“Taranto’s actions in June 2023 in Washington, D.C., were not offenses occurring at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” Mr. Martin wrote.

Click to comment

News

Video: Judge Orders Removal of Trump’s Name From Kennedy Center

Published

36 minutes ago

May 30, 2026

Press Room

Video: Judge Orders Removal of Trump’s Name From Kennedy Center

new video loaded: Judge Orders Removal of Trump’s Name From Kennedy Center

A federal judge in Washington on Friday ordered that President Trump’s name be removed from the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

By Jackeline Luna

May 29, 2026

News

Trump’s doctor recommends he lose weight and exercise more but says he is in ‘excellent health’ | CNN Politics

Published

3 hours ago

May 30, 2026

Press Room

Trump’s doctor recommends he lose weight and exercise more but says he is in ‘excellent health’ | CNN Politics

The White House released the results of President Donald Trump’s May physical late Friday evening, sharing a memo from his physician recommending he lose weight and exercise more while noting he is in excellent health.

“President Trump remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and overall physical function,” White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella wrote in a letter. “Cognitive and physical performance are excellent. He is fully fit to carry out all duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State.”

Barbabella wrote, “Preventive counseling was provided,” during the exam, “including guidance on diet, recommendation to take a low-dose aspirin, increased physical activity, and continued weight loss.”

The doctor noted the president stands 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 238 pounds.

At his physical exam last April, Trump weighed 224 pounds.

His visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Tuesday marked the third time he’s visited the facility for a medical exam since becoming the oldest president ever inaugurated last year.

Prior to the visit, the White House said the check-up would include “routine annual dental and medical assessments,” despite him having already visited a dentist in Florida twice this year.

Immediately following the visit, Trump offered scant details on Truth Social, writing “Everything checked out PERFECTLY.”

Since returning to the White House in 2025, visible ailments and speculation over his health have prompted the White House to divulge new details of the president’s physical condition.

The White House said swelling in his legs and ankles that was revealed last summer was a result of chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which valves inside certain veins don’t work the way they should, which can allow blood to pool or collect in the veins. Trump attempted wearing compression socks, but found them uncomfortable.

In Friday’s letter, the president’s doctor wrote that, during Tuesday’s physical, “Slight lower leg swelling was noted, with improvement from last year.”

The president has also developed noticeable bruising on his hands during his second term, which the White House has chalked up to frequent handshakes and attempted to cover up with concealer in photographs.

According to the doctor’s readout, Trump also submitted to a “comprehensive neurological exam,” which showed “normal mental status, intact cranial nerves, normal motor strength, sensation, reflexes, gait, and balance.”

As for Trump’s heart health, the doctor said, “Al-enhanced electrocardiogram (ECG) analysis estimated his cardiac age…to be approximately 14 years younger than his chronological age.”

Barbabella’s letter noted that Trump currently takes aspirin but didn’t give a dosage. When it’s used for preventive purposes, doctors generally advise taking 81 milligrams of aspirin per day, but Trump told the Wall Street Journal in January that he takes 325 milligrams, a dose that can raise the risk of bleeding.

“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump told the WSJ. “I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. … They’d rather have me take the smaller one. I take the larger one, but I’ve done it for years, and what it does do is, it causes bruising.”

Trump again took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a 10-minute screening test used to detect mild cognitive impairment and early dementia. The doctor said the president scored 30 out of 30.

This story has been updated with additional details.

News

Judge Tosses Citizenship Law Aimed at New Voters in New Hampshire

Published

11 hours ago

May 29, 2026

Press Room

Judge Tosses Citizenship Law Aimed at New Voters in New Hampshire

A federal judge has struck down a New Hampshire law that blocked new voters from using a sworn affidavit to prove their citizenship in the absence of official documents such as a birth certificate or passport.

The decision, filed late Thursday by Judge Samantha D. Elliott of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire, found that “eliminating the affidavits” as a means of proving citizenship “constitutes an unjustifiable burden on the right to vote in violation of the First and 14th Amendments.” The ruling immediately overturned the law, which was passed in 2024 and signed by the Republican governor at the time, Chris Sununu.

A spokesman for New Hampshire’s Justice Department said the state intended to appeal the decision.

The law “represents a common-sense approach to voter registration and election administration designed to protect the integrity of our elections,” the spokesman, Michael Garrity, said in a statement on Friday.

The law, which created some of the strictest voter registration requirements in the country, was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire on behalf of several groups, including the League of Women Voters of New Hampshire.

“New Hampshire’s elections have always been safe, secure and accurate,” Henry Klementowicz, the state A.C.L.U.’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. “This law could have unconstitutionally and needlessly prevented thousands of eligible voters from casting a ballot.”

Reports of wrongful voting in the state did not decline after the law’s passage, Judge Elliott noted, with a similar number of reports filed with the state attorney general in the year before the law was passed, and the year after.

The push for proof of citizenship has been at the core of Republican-backed efforts to change voting rules, ever since President Trump and his allies began promoting baseless conspiracy theories over the past decade that there has been widespread voter fraud by noncitizens.

Mr. Trump put documentary proof of citizenship at the center of his effort to change the country’s voting laws last year. He first signed an executive order in March 2025 that partly sought to establish such a requirement for federal elections, but that provision of the order was rejected by federal courts.

Republicans in Congress then took up the charge, making documentary proof of citizenship central to their federal voting legislation, known as the SAVE America Act. But the measure has stalled in Congress, where Republicans do not have enough votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster of the bill.

With the bill in limbo, Mr. Trump has threatened not to sign any other legislation until Republicans reform the filibuster to pass it, a procedural move known as the “nuclear option.” But his threats have not moved many Republicans to make the move.

There is no evidence of widespread voting by noncitizens, and the Trump administration’s efforts to prove these conspiracies are not succeeding: Out of 49.5 million voter registrations that have been checked by the beginning of 2026, the Department of Homeland Security referred around 0.02 percent of the names for further investigation. Any actual proven cases are likely to be a fraction of that fraction.

Even before the new law was passed, New Hampshire’s voting access had been more limited than most states’. It did not offer early in-person voting, or registration by mail for most voters. And it removed inactive voters after four years. More than 195,000 voters were removed in 2021 alone, according to a summary of evidence in the 100-page court decision.

New Hampshire does offer same-day registration on Election Day, an option that was used by voters some 350,000 times from 2016 to 2024, witnesses testified.

Under the law that was struck down, voters who showed up to register could present a birth certificate, a passport, naturalization papers “or any other reasonable documentation.” But they could no longer, as an alternative, sign an affidavit stating they were 18, a resident of the municipality they were voting in and a citizen of the United States.

“It may be tempting for some to describe the Qualified Voter Affidavit as an exception to the proof-of-citizenship requirement, but it is not,” Judge Elliott wrote in her decision. “A sworn affidavit capable of exposing an affiant to criminal prosecution is a method of proving citizenship.”

“Moreover,” she added, “the evidence shows that it is the only method of proof available to a significant number of New Hampshire voters.”

Experts testified in a trial this year that 5,000 to 30,000 residents in the state did not have documentary proof of citizenship. They said that 14,700 voters had used the affidavit option to register to vote from April to November of 2024.