Judge bars some Jan. 6 rioters from DC after Trump said he was ‘certainly’ open to hosting WH reunion
WASHINGTON — A federal judge barred eight Capitol riot participants from entering Washington, DC, without his permission Friday — hours after President Trump said he was open to hosting supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, at the White House.
DC US District Judge Amit Mehta’s order applies to most of the people whose sentences Trump commuted and who did not receive a full pardon — including Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday, just two days after Trump voided his 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy.
“The court hereby amends the conditions of supervised release … to include the following special conditions,” Mehta wrote.
“You must not knowingly enter the District of Columbia without first obtaining the permission from the Court,” the decree says, with an identical prohibition against setting foot in “the United States Capitol or onto surrounding grounds.”
Mehta is an appointee of former President Barack Obama and also serves as a panelist on the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
In addition to Rhodes, the new restrictions apply to Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Edward Vallejo, David Moerchel and Joseph Hacket.
On Monday, Trump, 78, pardoned more than 1,500 people who participated in the riot, which halted the counting of the Electoral College ballots from the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden by narrow swing-state margins.
Trump granted clemency to 14 people whose sentences weren’t fully wiped away, but said those cases also could “go to a full pardon.”
It was not immediately clear whether Mehta’s order would prompt Trump to enhance the clemency grants for those who initially got commutations.
Trump said Thursday afternoon that he was open to hosting rioters at the White House.
“I don’t know. I’m sure that they probably would like to. I did them something important, but what they did is they were protesting a crooked election. I mean, people understand that also, and they were treated very badly,” he said in the Oval Office.
“Nobody’s been treated like that. So I’d be open to it, certainly. I don’t know of anything like that, but I think they’re going to meet with some of the congresspeople — congressmen, women — want to meet [them], but I’d certainly be open to it.”
Trump, who had urged the mob to march toward the Capitol to stop that election from being “stolen” from him, was impeached by House Democrats for allegedly inciting the riot one week after the violence.
In 2023, Trump was charged criminally by the Biden Justice Department over his attempt to remain in power.
The 45th and 47th president notes he told the crowd to go “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol and rioters who collapsed an outer police perimeter skipped his pre-riot speech.
Trump’s detractors note he fired up his fans by telling them to “fight like hell.”
