U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against eight Oath Keepers defendants on Aug. 4, 2026, granting a Justice Department motion that vacated the remaining indictments and closing the final federal prosecution connected to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. ABC News

The Trump Justice Department moved to wipe away the Oath Keepers' convictions and ultimately to drop the case altogether. Mehta granted the motion but did so reluctantly, using his dismissal order to sharply criticize the department's decision. WBAL-TV The Washington Post

Mehta described his dismissal order as an "epilogue" that "diminishes the gravity of Jan. 6" and "excuses criminal acts that caused the peaceful transfer of presidential power to buckle." NPR

The dismissed case involved eight Oath Keepers defendants charged with seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Jan. 6 riot. Juries had convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and five other members of attempting to overthrow the government by force. Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison in May 2023, calling him an ongoing threat and peril to the country. NPR

The dismissal closes the last open federal case stemming from the Capitol riot. It follows a broader pattern of executive action targeting Jan. 6 prosecutions. On his first day in office, President Trump pardoned nearly every defendant charged in connection with the Capitol riot. In January 2026, Trump commuted the prison sentences of several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders as part of a sweeping act of clemency covering all 1,500-plus Jan. 6 defendants. NPR PBS NewsHour

Trump had also proposed a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" to compensate Jan. 6 rioters. The proposal met bipartisan resistance in Congress, and Trump later said the fund seemed dead. NPR

James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Stewart Rhodes, said in a social media post that seditious conspiracy "should never have been charged" and called the charge "a thought crime." NPR The Hill

The broader context here is the intersection of presidential clemency power and prosecutorial discretion with the federal judiciary's institutional role. Mehta's language in the dismissal order is notable for its directness: a sitting federal judge characterizing the executive branch's decision as one that diminishes the gravity of a violent attack on the Capitol and excuses criminal conduct. That a trial judge would use a dismissal order, a routine procedural vehicle, to deliver what amounts to a written rebuke of the Justice Department's charging and litigation strategy signals the depth of institutional friction between the Article III courts and the current Justice Department over Jan. 6 cases.

The practical effect of the dismissal is that no federal seditious conspiracy prosecution from Jan. 6 remains open. Seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era statute rarely charged before the Capitol riot cases, was the most serious charge secured against any Jan. 6 defendant. The Justice Department's decision to vacate those convictions, combined with the mass clemency, means that the legal record produced by the largest domestic prosecution in U.S. history has been largely unwound through executive action rather than appellate review. The convictions were never overturned on appeal; they were vacated at the Justice Department's request.

Rhodes's 18-year sentence, the longest imposed on any Jan. 6 defendant, is likewise erased from the active docket. The case never proceeded through the D.C. Circuit or Supreme Court, leaving the substantive legal questions about the application of seditious conspiracy to the Jan. 6 facts unresolved at the appellate level.