Justice Department removes Jan. 6 riot charge press releases from website

The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing charges against hundreds of people accused in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, stripping away a public archive that once helped track one of the largest criminal investigations in the department’s history.

NBC News said a review found that the vast majority of Jan. 6 defendant releases were gone from the department’s website. The department confirmed the deletions, while its Rapid Response account on X defended the move as part of “stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda” and said it was “proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration.”

The material had not been just a stack of old news releases. The Justice Department had built a comprehensive database covering about 1,600 defendants, along with monthly prosecution updates tied to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. That record helped document each stage of a sprawling case count that AP has previously put near 1,500, while NPR’s archive counted 1,575 criminal cases arising from the attack.

The deletions arrive after Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025 mass pardons of more than 1,500 people charged in connection with Jan. 6. They also follow a separate push by Trump’s Justice Department to unwind major riot convictions, including its effort to vacate the seditious conspiracy cases brought against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, among them Stewart Rhodes, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Enrique Tarrio and Dominic Pezzola.

The public-record fight sharpened after U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, in a February 1, 2025 ruling, rejected Trump’s claim that the prosecutions were a “national injustice.” Friedman said there had been no “grave national injustice” and ordered that a copy of the database be preserved on the federal court system’s website.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the deletion likely violated federal records law, citing 44 U.S.C. § 3106, which requires notice to the archivist when federal records are removed or deleted. On March 10, 2025, the National Archives opened an unauthorized-disposition case after the complaint. The question now is not only what the Justice Department chose to take down, but whether the government is reorganizing information or erasing a historical record that researchers, victims, defense lawyers and the public still need.