While indicating he did not agree, a federal judge granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss charges against a Volusia County Proud Boys leader and several other members of the far-right group.
Joe Biggs, who resided near Ormond Beach, had been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for his part in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But President Donald Trump on his first day back in office in 2025 signed orders ending cases and releasing so called “J6ers.”
Trump commuted Biggs’ sentence, freeing him from prison. Trump granted pardons to nearly all of the more than 1,500 defendants in the Jan. 6 riots, and commuted the sentences of some Proud Boys and others.
Trump granted a pardon to Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a Miami man and former national chairman of the Proud Boys.
Judge grants Justice Department request to dismiss Proud Boy case
In a memo filed July 10, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case against Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean and Dominic Pezzola.
The case was dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.
An appeals court had already granted a government request to vacate the judgements against the four men, the judge wrote.
In 2023, a jury had convicted Proud Boys National Chairman Tarrio, Rehl, Nordean and Biggs of seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government. They were sentenced to lengthy terms in federal prison, ranging from 15 to 22 years.
Pezzola was not convicted of seditious conspiracy but was found guilty of other charges related to Jan. 6.
Trump pardoned Tarrio when he took office in 2025.
Judge Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, wrote that he had handed down the lengthy sentences in part to deter such actions as the storming of the Capitol in the future.
Judge: Don’t mistake granting of government’s Proud Boys’ motion as agreement
But in his order on July 10, the judge wrote he had little choice in the request from the Department of Justice to dismiss the case.
“President Trump’s views about the prosecution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 — whether those views are based on fact or fiction — are well-known, as is his intention to extend clemency to them through the Executive Order. The Government’s request to dismiss this case is consistent with that general approach,” Kelly wrote.
He added that “no one should mistake the Court’s granting of the Government’s motion for its agreement with those decisions.”
Judge: Jan. 6 was an attack on Congress
Kelly wrote that the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, “was a perilous event.”
“It was an attack on people, including police officers, many of whom were injured,” Kelly wrote. “It was an attack on a coordinate branch of government — Congress — that the Founders saw fit to give a place of primacy in Article I of the Constitution. And it was an attack on the Constitution’s mechanism to facilitate the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, what President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’”
— Frank Fernandez covers courts and criminal justice in Volusia and Flagler counties for The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Case dropped against Proud Boys, including leader from Volusia
Reporting by Frank Fernandez, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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By Frank Fernandez, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
