(Ken Silva, Headline USA) U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, who spearheaded the prosecution of hundreds of peaceful Jan. 6 protestors over the last three-plus years, has announced his impending resignation.
The Justice Department said in a Monday press release that Graves’s resignation is effective Jan. 16. The U.S. attorney oversaw the prosecution of roughly 1,600 J6ers, with 1,100 of them having already been sentenced for their conduct.
“Because politically motivated violence and destruction rip at the fabric of our society, Mr. Graves made federally prosecuting such crimes a priority,” the DOJ said.
Reporter Julie Kelly noted that Graves’s track record wasn’t as successful as the DOJ portrayed it in the press release. Even by his own standards, Graves dropped the ball in many cases, she noted.
“Last June, the Supreme Court overturned how Graves applied 18 USC 1512(c)(2), a post Enron obstruction statute, in at least 300 J6 cases. And the D.C. appellate court twice reversed excessive sentences sought by Graves,” Kelly wrote in a Monday Substack article “Even more unforgivable is the fact at least three J6 defendants—Matthew Perna, Mark Aungst, and Nord Meacham—committed suicide on Graves’ watch.”
The year after her husband was appointed DC US attorney, Fatima Goss Graves enjoyed a big jump in donations to her radical leftwing nonprofit: pic.twitter.com/zTcKBU2G7i
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) December 31, 2024
Graves’s track record has some in the MAGA movement calling for his prosecution. Notorious anti-Trump lawyer Mark Zaid told Politico last month that some of his deep-state clients should leave the country when the next President takes office.
“There are a small number of people who I have told, ‘Look, you should take a vacation outside of the country around the time of inauguration, just to see what happens,’” Zaid reportedly said. “Just go on a routine vacation and see what plays out come Jan. 20, 21st, 22nd.”
But while Graves’s resignation is impending, his office continues to charge J6ers. On Dec. 4, for example, 44-year-old Alabama man Robert James Bonham, was charged with a range of crimes, including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder”—as reported by Kelly.
The latest DOJ stats—released on Election Day—show that the federal government’s furious pace of arrests continued throughout this year. The DOJ charged 725 from January 2021 to January 2022; more than 200 in 2022; about 225 last year; and another 419 through nearly the first half of 2024.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
