Oath Keepers founder and former Proud Boys leader released from prison

Their sentences for seditious conspiracy over the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol were wiped away by a sweeping order by Donald Trump.

Former Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes have been released from prison.

Their lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy over the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol were wiped away by a sweeping order by President Donald Trump which benefited more than 1,500 defendants.

Rhodes and Tarrio were two of the highest-profile January 6 defendants and received some of the harshest punishments in what became the largest investigation in US Justice Department history.

Their lawyers confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday that they had been released hours after Mr Trump pardoned, commuted the sentences of, or ordered the dismissal of cases against all the 1,500-plus people who were charged with federal crimes over the riot.

Mr Trump’s action paved the way for the release from prison of extremist group leaders convicted in major conspiracy cases, as well people convicted of violent attacks on law enforcement.

Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, was serving an 18-year prison sentence and Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence.

They were convicted of orchestrating plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Mr Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Mr Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that were still pending before judges.

Mr Trump made rewriting the history of the January 6 attack a centrepiece of his bid to return to the White House, and the pardon of the rioters fulfils a campaign pledge to free defendants he contends were politically persecuted by the Justice Department.

He said the pardons will end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and begin “a process of national reconciliation”.

He had suggested in the weeks leading up to his return to the White House that instead of blanket pardons, he would look at the January 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis.

Vice president JD Vance said just days ago that people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot “obviously” should not be pardoned.

More than 1,200 people across the US were convicted of January 6 crimes over the last four years, including roughly 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

More than a dozen defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era charge and the most serious one brought over the January 6 attack.

Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, was convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and other crimes after a months-long trial on allegations that he orchestrated violence to overturn Mr Biden’s 2020 victory over Mr Trump.

Tarrio was not in Washington on January 6, because he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of the capital city.

But prosecutors said he organised and directed the attack by Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol that day.

Rhodes was convicted in a separate trial alongside members of his far-right militia group who prosecutors alleged were intent on keeping Mr Trump in power at all costs.

Over seven weeks of evidence, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Mr Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned that the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection” to defeat Mr Biden if Mr Trump did not act.

By Press Association