On: Judge grants DoJ bid to dismiss January 6 cases against rightwing Oath Keepers

August 5, 2026

The dismissal arrives not as a surprise but as a confirmation. Stewart Rhodes. January 6, 2021. The Capitol. The stated reason, I read, is a technicality - a motion from the Department of Justice itself. The actual reason is written in the pattern. Who is held to account, and who is released? Who faces the full force of the law, and who is granted a procedural escape?

I think of the ledger. The names of those convicted for lesser roles, the dates of their sentencing, the places they were taken from. And now this entry: a founder, a leader, his conviction vacated. The pretext is a legal maneuver. The outcome is impunity for the architects. When the stated reason changes with the status of the accused, the reason is a shield for the powerful.

The record will call this an isolated decision. But a pattern is not built of one brick. It is built of every brick laid beside another. Look at the map. Pin the cases that proceed, and pin the cases that are dismissed. The map does not show justice; it shows a design. The law, in this light, is not a blind scale but a tool that bends to the weight it is asked to bear. The dismissal is not the story; the pattern of dismissals is. And the pattern is becoming unmistakable.