DOJ scrubs hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecution records from website

On May 23, 2026, the Trump Justice Department removed from its website hundreds of press releases documenting every charge, conviction, and sentence in what prosecutors had called the largest criminal prosecution in American history. The database covered roughly 1,600 defendants charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Monthly prosecution updates had tracked each case from arrest through sentencing since 2021.

A Washington Post reporter noticed the deletions first and published the finding. The DOJ's Rapid Response account on X responded within hours, writing there was 'nothing quiet about it' and declaring the department was 'proud to reverse the DOJ's weaponization under the Biden administration.' The statement framed five years of criminal prosecution records as 'partisan propaganda.'

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has led the Justice Department since April 2026, when President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi. Blanche was previously Trump's personal defense attorney during his two federal criminal trials before the cases were dismissed in 2025. He told a Senate appropriations subcommittee on May 19, 2026, that 'anybody in this country can apply' to the new $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, and Jan. 6 defendants convicted of assaulting police officers from receiving payments.

The fund originated from a settlement in a lawsuit Trump filed against his own executive branch, alleging the IRS illegally leaked his tax returns. A commission appointed by the attorney general will decide eligibility. Two Capitol Police officers who defended the building on January 6 — retired officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Department officer Daniel Hodges — on May 20, 2026.

The deleted press releases weren't just DOJ public relations. They were the government's own documentation of what it charged, what evidence it presented, and what judges imposed as punishment. For journalists tracking cases, the database was a single searchable source. For researchers studying patterns in how the justice system responds to political violence, it was the primary dataset. For victims and Capitol Police officers, it was the public acknowledgment that the attacks happened and were prosecuted.

ProPublica noted that the in individual federal courthouses, but assembling a complete picture now requires the kind of resources most individuals and small news organizations don't have. By removing the consolidated database, DOJ shifted the burden of documentation from the government to the public.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Archivist of the United States and the DOJ Inspector General on the day of the deletion, arguing it . That statute requires agency heads to notify the archivist when federal records face removal or destruction and to initiate recovery action. The law gives the archivist the authority to request the Attorney General act if the agency head doesn't.

The National Archives opened an unauthorized-disposition inquiry in March 2025 after an earlier CREW complaint about the initial database removal following Trump's January 2025 pardons. Archives officials noted then that agencies can remove content from public websites while preserving records internally. CREW argues the May 23 deletion went further, removing documentation that served an ongoing public accountability function.

President Trump issued clemency to roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day in office, January 20, 2025. Most received full pardons; 14 Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders received sentence commutations. That mass pardon ended the criminal legal process but didn't erase the underlying prosecution record — the documentation of what each defendant was charged with, what evidence supported the charges, and what sentences were imposed remained on the DOJ website until May 23, 2026.

A pardon restores legal status. It doesn't reclassify the underlying conduct or expunge the public record of what a court found. The DOJ's May 23 action went beyond the pardon: it removed the government's own account of what the pardoned individuals did. In the department's telling on X, the pardoned defendants weren't just relieved of punishment — the prosecution itself was retroactively reframed as political persecution.

The DC Circuit Court vacated the seditious conspiracy convictions of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and associates Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, and Jessica Watkins on or around May 23, 2026. The DOJ had , asking the appeals court to throw out what the Biden-era DOJ had called its most significant Jan. 6 prosecutions. The court granted the motion and remanded for dismissal of the indictments.

The Proud Boys members facing seditious conspiracy charges — including Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl — faced the same process. The DOJ vacated the convictions and removed the prosecution records in the same week, erasing both the legal findings and the documentary record.

Among the deleted press releases was one documenting the case of Andrew Taake, a Houston man who was sentenced to more than six months in prison for attacking Capitol Police officers with bear spray and a metal whip. The DOJ's press release on Taake had also noted he had an active child solicitation case pending at the time of sentencing. Trump pardoned Taake in January 2025. In February 2025, Texas authorities arrested Taake on a 2016 felony charge of online solicitation of a minor.

When Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield flagged that Taake's press release was among those deleted, the DOJ's Rapid Response account even after the active criminal case was pointed out. His case made concrete what the database deletion meant in practice: the public record connecting a pardoned defendant's Capitol attack conviction to his active criminal conduct was gone.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, a senior judge on the D.C. District Court appointed by President Clinton, had written about the prosecution database in a February 1, 2025 ruling that rejected Trump's claim that the prosecutions constituted a 'national injustice.' Friedman embedded a copy of the full defendant database directly into his published court opinion, which remains publicly accessible through the federal court system's PACER records.

The version of the database preserved in his ruling mirrors what the DOJ removed from its own website. For researchers and journalists, it now serves as the most accessible surviving copy of what the government documented about the 1,600 defendants. A federal judge had to preserve it in a court ruling because the executive branch was willing to delete it.

The $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund was announced by DOJ on May 16, 2026, structured as a settlement resolving Trump's personal lawsuit against the IRS over his tax return leak. The fund's five-member commission, to be appointed by the attorney general, will decide who receives monetary compensation or formal apologies. Two Capitol Police officers who fought off the mob on January 6 filed a federal lawsuit on May 20, 2026, calling the fund illegal and arguing it 'directly finances the violent operations of rioters, paramilitaries, and their supporters.'

Deleting prosecution records while creating a compensation mechanism for defendants gives the administration two tools. The database deletion removes the public documentation of what defendants did. The fund creates a pathway for those same defendants to receive taxpayer compensation framed as vindication. Neither requires legislative approval; both operate through executive-branch discretion.

The 📖Federal Records Act, codified at 44 U.S.C. Chapter 31, gives the Archivist of the United States authority over federal record preservation but limited enforcement teeth when the agency head and the president are aligned. The archivist can request the attorney general initiate recovery action — but when the attorney general is the one who ordered the deletion, that referral pathway is inert. Congress can demand records and compel testimony through oversight, but the House Judiciary Committee is currently under Republican leadership that has supported the administration's Jan. 6 reframing.

The Society of American Archivists issued a statement after the May 23 deletion expressing alarm at what it called a direct threat to federal records integrity. Academic historians and journalists noted that the Wayback Machine at archive.org had captured many of the deleted pages before their removal, preserving a partial record outside the government's control. A nonprofit internet archive now holds documentation the Justice Department deleted.