WASHINGTON – With Donald Trump promising to pardon some, if not all, of those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, logic would suggest that the Justice Department might slow down or halt its ongoing prosecution of J6 defendants, and that the FBI would terminate its ongoing orders to surveil, raid and apprehend new suspects who demonstrated in Washington, D.C. that fateful day.
In just a few weeks, on Jan. 20, 2025, President-elect Donald Trump will make his return to the Oval Office, something long awaited by the men and women who have been politically prosecuted by the Biden DOJ for protesting the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results at the “Save America” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has vowed repeatedly over the years to pardon the Jan. 6 prisoners. And in his first interview after his historic Nov. 5 victory, the president-elect, who himself faced an unprecedented 92 politically motivated felony counts while on the campaign trail, doubled down on his promise to free the political prisoners.
Speaking with “Meet the Press,” Trump vowed to grant pardons on “day one” upon returning to the White House.
Yet the DOJ and federal prosecutors are ramping up the charges against Jan. 6 defendants, even circumventing the Supreme Court’s ruling on its misuse of federal statutes, to send protesters who trespassed in the “People’s House” to prison for years or decades, all in a scurry as the new Republican administration prepares to assume power.
The FBI continues to steadily arrest protesters who sought to “Stop the Steal,” apprehending at least two new Jan. 6 suspects every day, often in predawn SWAT team raids, four years after the event.
Criminal defense attorney Roger Roots, who has represented nearly four dozen Jan. 6 defendants over the past three-and-a-half years, is sounding the alarm on the government’s incessant attempts to destroy the lives of everyday Americans who supported Trump by exercising their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly.
As Roots awaits a verdict on the fourteenth Jan. 6 case he’s taken to trial, he maintains the unconstitutional assault on these defendants’ rights warrants a blanket pardon for all Jan. 6 defendants and suspects in “one fell swoop” immediately after Trump takes office … “on day one.”
The government insistence on doling out to J6ers prison sentences fit for murderers, child predators and perpetrators of mass casualty events is “a black stain on the history of America,” the crusading attorney explained in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily.
“I’ve been on the front lines, and I’ve seen that this is the darkest chapter in the history of criminal justice in the United States. A lot of lawyers don’t even know this – many Republicans and conservatives don’t even know – how evil it has become.
“The American people clearly and resoundingly have spoken – they are tired of these cases. The government is not slowing down, even though they clearly lost the election,” he said. “The Jan. 6 overzealous prosecutions were a factor in the Trump re-election. Nonetheless the Biden DOJ continues arresting people for Jan. 6-related events.”
Roots and his law partner John Pierce are inundated with phone calls from recently charged Jan. 6 suspects “almost every day.”
“We had a phone call from a Jan. 6 suspect yesterday – indicating that the FBI contacted him and told him that he’s got to be arrested and that he needs legal help. Even though Trump has promised to pardon all these guys – hopefully all of them – the government is not slowing down,” he reiterated.
As the DOJ maintains a 100% conviction rate on jury trials, the government typically provides defendants several months to turn themselves in after the jury reaches the verdict. But for at least two of Root’s clients, J6 defendants Jared Kastner and Patrick Montgomery, a judge has granted the prosecutors’ request that they report to prison for Christmas.
“It just boggles my mind,” Roots exclaimed. “I have two Jan. 6 clients who were sentenced recently. They have been ordered to report to prison very quickly – on Dec. 23, the day before Christmas Eve.
“Kastner has two new babies, brand new babies, and he’s a newlywed, new father. He’s been sentenced to five months in jail. He went to trial and was given five months, which I feel was an extremely harsh sentence. He really did nothing but walk through a small part of the Capitol and then walk out – five months in [prison] is his sentence.”
Kastner, 24, was a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base employee until he was charged with, according to federal court records, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a capitol building.
The FBI retrieved records from Google while investigating the riot and identified a Gmail account and phone number of a device that was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and associated with Kastner. Records from Google placed the device associated with the account inside the Capitol from 2:14 to 2:52 p.m., according to court records. Kastner was released after his Dec. 8, 2021 arrest in a predawn raid of his residence.
Another one of Roots’ client, Patrick Montgomery, 51, was recently sentenced to 37 months in prison and is also ordered to serve three years of supervised release once his sentence is completed.
Montgomery flew to Washington, D.C., for former President Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally, walked into the Capitol building and briefly scuffled with a police officer. Federal court documents said Montgomery was inside the Capitol for roughly 20 minutes. He was arrested on Jan. 17, 2021.
In a dramatic departure from the norm, federal judges are green-lighting the prosecution’s requests to expedite the “classification” process. Ordinarily judges provide prosecutors and probation officers three to five months for classification, in which the government establishes the type of facility in which defendants will serve their sentence. Based on the government’s assessment, they could serve their sentences in camps or low, medium, high or maximum-security facilities within the Federal Bureau of Prisons system.
Yet suddenly, before Trump returns to the White House, the DOJ in tandem with federal judges are expediting the classification process in what Roots contends is an effort to put as many January 6ers behind bars as possible before Inauguration Day.
“Frequently, when these guys get sentenced, they get an order to report to a Bureau of Prisons facility, but the judge does not know which facility. There has to be a period of ‘classification’ as to whether they’re going to ‘maximum security,’ ‘medium security’ or whatever.
“We’ve even seen five-and-a-half months, where a January 6er was sentenced to prison, but had five-and-a-half months to wait before he was ordered to report,” he said. But now, says Root, “Just in the last few weeks, they have sped up this process. They’ve been trying to convict and imprison as many as they can before Trump takes office on Jan. 20.”
Also, for Christmas, prosecutors are charging Stephanie Baez, another one of Roots’ clients, with violating 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), one of the most serious criminal charges leveled against former President Donald Trump himself and an ever-growing number of January 6 defendants, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that the statute has been misused to prosecute demonstrators.
Traditionally, the obstruction charge, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, was used to prosecute crimes of document tampering, witness tampering and evidence tampering. The Justice Department had never used this statute to prosecute demonstrators, even when protests had descended into skirmishes, violence, riots, arson, assault and death.
In June, SCOTUS overturned the obstruction charge used to incarcerate hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants.
“But guess what?,” Roots told WND. “We have three cases where the government has refused to drop the 1512 charge! We just had a trial this week, the trial of Stephanie Baez, in which the government refuses to drop her 1512 prosecution.”
“Baez went on trial this week based on nothing but some Instagram tweets or comments on social media that she had published, where she was talking about certificates. She mentioned certificates and she mentioned that January 6 is where the vice president – Mike Pence, at that time – plays a role and it was at least within his power to choose to not accept certain ballots from states where there was obvious election improprieties,” he continued. “She posted about this on social media, and now they are using those posts to justify continuing to prosecute her for a 1512 charge.
“We are hoping that this case will get dismissed, but here we are, with Baez being prosecuted for this ridiculous felony charge, once again, even though the Supreme Court has struck it down.”
Roots drew a distinction between the “insurrection” narrative pushed endlessly by the Biden administration, Democrat politicians and legacy media, versus the reality that the federal government is unprecedentedly applying statutes that carry 20-year prison sentences for what normally and legally qualify as misdemeanor offenses.
“The U.S. Department of Justice had been prosecuting all these J6ers with this 20-year felony essentially for, honestly, misdemeanor disorderly conduct,” he said. “Engaging in a demonstration that becomes a riot is disorderly conduct. It’s a misdemeanor and that’s historically how we’ve always treated these [violations] in riot situations everywhere – it’s a misdemeanor.
“Trump should absolutely and simply, with one fell swoop, pardon every single Jan. 6 defendant – with one fell swoop. Honestly, they were all mistreated. None of them had … an opportunity for a fair defense, and so Trump should just pardon them all with one signature of the pen.”
