Judges sentence January 6 Capitol rioters, fully aware a Trump pardon could spare them

(CNN) — On the last day of federal court before Donald Trump takes office, the judge who presided over the president-elect’s now-dismissed criminal January 6, 2021, case told a defendant who admitted to disorderly conduct that day that he may be the last US Capitol rioter she’ll sentence.

If Trump grants blanket pardons, as expected at least for nonviolent offenders charged in the 2021 Capitol siege, the judiciary’s role in overseeing the cases would end immediately. If Trump were to also pardon violent offenders and seditious conspirators, those who are serving prison time could be released from federal custody.

“This may be, depending upon what happens outside these walls, the last one of these,” Judge Tanya Chutkan told the defendant, Brian Leo Kelly, who also pleaded guilty to a second misdemeanor charge, trespassing inside the Capitol.

“I’m fully aware you may never serve a sentence in this case,” Chutkan added.

Others being sentenced Friday included Kellye SoRelle, who was convicted of obstructing justice because she encouraged the Oath Keepers to delete their January 6 plans over text; a pair of brothers who violently assaulted police at the Capitol; a man who broke down one of the original, 171-year-old wooden doors in the US Senate; and two men who separately sprayed police guarding the Capitol complex with chemical irritants.

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone also appeared at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse Friday to provide a victim impact statement at another defendant’s sentencing – a man who had taken part in pulling him into the crowd of violent Trump supporters, who proceeded to tase and beat the officer.

Chutkan sentenced Kelly to 10 days in jail plus probation, community service and a restitution payment. She allowed him to walk out of the courtroom and voluntarily surrender at a later date – if he is not pardoned.

Kelly is among the nonviolent January 6 defendants, who walked through the Capitol halls, the air hazy from chemical irritants, filming on his cellphone and “taking photos as souvenirs,” prosecutors said.

“You became part of the effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power,” Chutkan told him. “I hope we never have something like this happen in this country. Before January 6, I didn’t think it could happen.

“It exposed such serious cracks in our democracy.”

Chutkan, in an apparent allusion to Trump’s conspiracy case and his promise of pardons, added that she wouldn’t let her sentence for Kelly be influenced by “what might happen” or “who hasn’t been prosecuted.”

After the hearing, Kelly told CNN he didn’t want to say if he expected Trump to pardon him.

“I hope the best for everybody – Democrats and Republicans,” he said.

At one point during his sentencing, Kelly and Chutkan discussed the beauty inside the Capitol building.

Kelly, a welder and construction worker from Northern Virginia who had worked at Arlington Cemetery, said he had never been as close to the Capitol as he was on January 6. He added he went there “to support my candidate” but not to protest.

Chutkan talked about paying her respects to late President Jimmy Carter at the Capitol last week. “I was struck again how beautiful, and people came in and desecrated that beautiful space,” she said of January 6.

She also spoke at length about the police officers, including Fanone, who ran toward the violence and are now scarred by the events of January 6.

“Some of them have protected me,” said the judge, who has increased security protection since being assigned the Trump case. “They don’t talk about it. They did their job. They understand what really happened that day and how close we came.”

In sentencing SoRelle to one year in prison plus three years of probation, Judge Amit Mehta told the former general counsel for the right-wing group that sedition is “the most serious criminal conduct that Americans can commit against their country.”

“You have done a lot of damage to the country,” Mehta told her.

At another sentencing, the brothers Andrew Valentin and Matthew Valentin, were each given two and a half years in prison — and immediately taken into custody to begin serving their sentences.

Matthew Valentin had tried to tear a baton from a police officer on January 6, and Andrew Valentin threw a chair at a police line. Both pleaded guilty in September to assaulting police.

Judge Reggie Walton, speaking to them in court Friday, said he had trouble understanding how the mob was “willing to trample our democracy.”

Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg, who is the DC District Court’s chief judge, noted the workload the court bore in handling the proceedings of nearly 1,600 Capitol rioters over the past four years.

“I am proud of the way this court handled this unprecedented and historic prosecution, that judges regardless of which president appointed them handled matters fairly and expeditiously,” he told CNN.

The busy scene at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse on Friday echoed the lockdown the building faced in the aftermath of January 6.

The courthouse was surrounded by tall, black metal fencing. A surveillance chopper hovered over the building, loudly, and streets around the courthouse were already closed down by law enforcement for security purposes.

CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.