This
is confusing, but some of the Proud Boys had their sentences for seditious
conspiracy dismissed.
The executive branch decides who to prosecute, not the judges.
To
understand what just happened with the Proud Boys convictions being tossed out,
you have to look at it through the lens of pure, unadulterated American
institutional mechanics. It is a story about the separation of powers, where
the gears of the Constitution ground together, made a terrible screeching
noise, and did exactly what they were designed to do even if it left the
presiding judge looking like he’d just farted audibly in church when he thought
he was just releasing a silent one.
In the
grand tradition of government machinery, the system worked exactly as written,
even if the result feels entirely surreal. The executive branch used its
constitutional muscle to decide a crime wasn’t a crime anymore, and the
judiciary was forced to nod, tip its hat, and go back to its chambers to write
a sternly worded essay about the fragility of democracy.
As
Judge Kelly darkly noted, if the American experiment is going to last another
250 years, the people not the courts are going to have to be the ones to defend
it. Because when the Justice Department decides to walk away from a fight,
the judge is just a man in a black robe holding a useless gavel.
Not to
mention, the FBI has far bigger fish to fry like the failing NY Times, the
Reflecting Pool and Georgia Voting in November 2020. I'm sure they'll find
their Alger Hiss at some minute scale. Not enough to have impacted anything,
but enough to convince those who need only the slightest of convincing.