When the FBI raided the Baltimore County home of Elias N. Costianes in February 2021, they found cocaine, testosterone, marijuana, a scale and guns. “The defendant was a drug dealer,” prosecutors would later say, adding, “he was also armed.” Costianes said he was merely supplying himself and friends.

Last September, a federal judge sentenced Costianes, who pleaded guilty to possessing a gun while using illegal drugs, to a year and a day in federal prison. But Costianes then played a new card: He was also part of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and President Donald Trump had pardoned him.

Costianes claimed that the pardon also covered his gun conviction, because the FBI raid was related to his pardoned actions on Jan. 6.

And the government agreed.

In seven cases around the country, the Justice Department has argued that separate criminal actions uncovered by the Jan. 6 investigation are covered by Trump’s pardon, and the unrelated charges — usually for illegal gun possession — should be dismissed.

In some of the cases, federal prosecutors initially opposed wiping away the unrelated felony convictions. “The convictions did not occur at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” prosecutors in D.C. first argued in the case of Dan Edwin Wilson, sentenced to five years for possessing guns after multiple felony convictions. “And thus, by the plain language of the certificate, the pardon does not extend to these convictions.”

But within weeks, Wilson’s prosecutors reversed themselves, saying they had “received further clarity on the intent of the presidential pardon” from the Justice Department and that it did include “a pardon for the firearm convictions to which the defendant pleaded.”

After Trump’s executive order on Jan. 20, the Office of the Pardon Attorney issued individual certificates to almost all of the roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, which stated that “The pardon applies only to convictions for offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” When courts have pressed the Justice Department for legal reasoning or precedent on why the Jan. 6-adjacent cases should be thrown out, their lawyers have said only that this was Trump’s intent, and courts should defer to “the Executive’s reasonable interpretation of the pardon language.”

The White House declined to comment, and a Justice Department spokesperson did not respond.

George T. Pallas, a Miami lawyer who represents Wilson and two other Jan. 6 defendants with additional charges, said, “A judge, any judge, does not need to interpret what President Trump meant, we know what he meant. He is speaking through his surrogate, the assistant U.S. attorney present in the courtroom. She’s telling the judge what his intent was. That’s the end of the inquiry.”

Though the pardon says it is only for offenses related to the Jan. 6 riot, Pallas said “related” is the key word: Investigators discovered the alleged other crimes only while investigating the riot, and “but for that investigation” the offenses would not have been charged, Pallas said.

Three judges have agreed and thrown out pending cases, including that of Guy Reffitt, who carried a gun into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then threatened his family if they reported him, landing him an 80-month sentence. When the FBI searched his home in January 2021, they allegedly found a silencer, which is illegal, and he was charged in federal court in Texas.

Video footage of the Capitol riot on January 6 shows plaintiff Guy Reffitt wearing a tactical-style vest and rinsing his eyes. (Courtesy of FBI)
After Reffitt was released from prison on his Jan. 6 sentence, a Texas judge last week granted the government’s motion to dismiss the silencer case. Judges in D.C. and Maryland also recently dismissed “felon in possession” cases discovered when riot suspects were first arrested.

Some judges, however, have resisted.

In the District, U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said in a hearing last month for Wilson that pardons must “have a fixed meaning” on the day they are issued. “The intent cannot evolve over time as new cases are brought to [the president’s] attention,” the Associated Press reported Friedrich as saying. “I don’t think you can just have an open pardon,” Friedrich said. “It can’t be ‘we know it when we see it.’” She has not yet ruled on Wilson’s request, joined by the Justice Department, to vacate his gun convictions.

Three federal appeals courts, in Virginia, Florida and California, have also hesitated to immediately grant the government’s motion to dismiss similar cases pending before them. Costianes was already appealing his sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond when the Jan. 6 pardon came; that court has asked him and the government to file briefs on the issue of whether the pardon applies.

Carol Stewart, Costianes’s lawyer, said in an email the search of Costianes’s house in February 2021 “was intended to find any indication of any crime and then try to make it part of prosecution of” Jan. 6-related crimes. She said Trump “wrote [the pardon] broadly enough to cover searches conducted under J6 warrants … The courts don’t have authority to interpret a pardon when the POTUS has spoken.”

In the case of Jeremy Brown of Florida, his Jan. 6 misdemeanor case was dismissed, but he was convicted at trial in 2022 of possessing classified material and illegally possessing short-barreled guns and live M-67 hand grenades, discovered during a search in September 2021. Sentenced to seven years, the former Army Special Forces soldier appealed the conviction and was awaiting oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta when the Jan. 6 pardon was issued. He, and the Justice Department, asked the appeals court to order the case dismissed entirely.

At oral argument last week, Judge Adalberto Jordan asked Brown’s lawyer why the pardon covered the Florida case. “Because the Department of Justice has determined that it does,” attorney Michael Ufferman said.

“And that’s not a completely satisfactory answer,” Jordan said. The judge said he could see the gun and grenade charges being covered by the pardon, “but it is not apparent to me that the pardon, even broadly construed, covers” the classified document conviction by a jury.

Jordan asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Holly L. Gershow what guidance she had received from the Justice Department. “We have received limited guidance on this from the department,” Gershow said. She said Justice was reviewing “on a case-by-case basis. And that in this case, the department views these offenses as related to the offenses of the occurrences of January 6th because the documents and the firearms were discovered as a result of a search warrant investigating the events of January 6th.”

The case is pending while Brown decides whether he wants to withdraw his appeal and allow the district court to consider the government’s motion to dismiss. Ufferman did not respond to a request for comment.

Even though Brown received a seven-year sentence for possessing classified material and hasn’t been pardoned or otherwise cleared of the charges, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released him anyway, court records show.

In California, Benjamin John Martin was arrested in September 2021 on felony charges associated with Jan. 6, and agents also found a gun safe with six guns inside. He had previously been convicted of domestic battery and prohibited from owning a gun, and was charged with illegal possession of firearms. Convicted at trial and sentenced in November to more than three years in prison, his case was on appeal when the pardon came.

Martin asked for bail on Jan. 21, while his appeal was being considered, but U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston ruled that the weapons possession “did not occur at or near the Capitol” and concluded that “the pardon does not cover the conviction.” Martin then asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco to release him on bail — prosecutors initially opposed, then two weeks later supported this — followed by a request to vacate the conviction.

The appeals court declined to throw out the case, but instructed Thurston to set bail for Martin. Instead, Thurston removed herself from the case last week. “Good cause appearing,” Thurston wrote without further clarification, “the assigned District Judge disqualifies herself from all proceedings in the present action.” Another judge then released Martin, who is represented by Pallas.

In two other cases, the government has opposed releasing Jan. 6 defendants facing other charges. In Tennessee, Jan. 6 defendant Edward Kelley is accused of plotting in December 2022 to kill the FBI agents who investigated his Jan. 6 case. Prosecutors on Feb. 18 opposed a motion to dismiss the case, saying it was “about the defendant’s entirely independent criminal conduct in Tennessee, in late 2022, more than 500 miles away from the Capitol … unrelated in both time and place to the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

The judge has not yet ruled on the motion. Kelley’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

And in Washington, prosecutors opposed dismissal of the charges against Taylor Taranto, who was already facing Jan. 6 charges when he was arrested near former president Barack Obama’s D.C. home in July 2023, allegedly with multiple weapons, large capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. “Taranto’s actions in June 2023 in Washington, D.C., were not offenses occurring at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” prosecutors responded.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, rejected Taranto’s request to dismiss the weapons case last month.

But Taranto’s lawyer, Carmen D. Hernandez, said she had asked prosecutors “to reconsider in light of the subsequent dismissals in the various cases.” She said Taranto’s case “fits within the language and intent of the pardon more so than the other cases they’ve dismissed because Taranto’s case was filed as a single indictment in this district.” She argued that “the government implicitly determined that the gun charges were ‘related’ to the J6 charges by filing them together in one indictment,” though Nichols rejected that claim when prosecutors initially opposed it.

.......and then all of a sudden the mate comes swooping out of the sky onto the nest.

I suggest you give up. The Left does not want to look for solutions.

I kinda feel like you're just trolling people with comments like that. You can have legitimate disagreements with people without putting them down.

Though the pardon says it is only for offenses related to the Jan. 6 riot, Pallas said “related” is the key word: Investigators discovered the alleged other crimes only while investigating the riot, and “but for that investigation” the offenses would not have been charged, Pallas said.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Investigators discovered the alleged other crimes only while investigating the riot, and “but for that investigation” the offenses would not have been charged, Pallas said. [...] Costianes was already appealing his sentence to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond when the Jan. 6 pardon came; that court has asked him and the government to file briefs on the issue of whether the pardon applies.

Should evidence of crimes not specifically mentioned in the warrant be admissible as evidence? (This is a direct question to YOU.) As much as I would like this evidence to also be admitted there is a name for this.

Have we come to an agreement? =)

And the whole pardoning system needs to be reformed, but that's only possible through a constitutional amendment which seems pretty unlikely.

So, I've been stewing for a long time and I'm finally pulling the trigger. I'm planning my first event!

"Hello, my baby. Hello, my honey. Hello, my ragtime gal."