Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia who was recently released from prison by President Trump, is free to enter Washington after a federal judge on Monday rescinded his own order from last week barring him from the city without permission.
The decision by the judge, Amit P. Mehta, to reverse himself was a minor development in the case of Mr. Rhodes who, until Mr. Trump granted him clemency on Inauguration Day, was serving an 18-year sentence on seditious conspiracy charges arising his role in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But the move had a larger significance for the way it threw a spotlight on the actions of Ed Martin, President Trump’s new U.S. attorney in Washington, who came to Mr. Rhodes’ aid last week by arguing that Judge Mehta had overreached by issuing the travel order in the first place.
On Friday, Mr. Martin inserted himself into the case, in effect assuming the role of the far-right leader’s defense lawyer by asserting that Judge Mehta had no authority to control Mr. Rhodes’ movements after Mr. Trump commuted his prison term to time served.
In an order issued on Monday, Judge Mehta more or less agreed, conceding that the “unconditional” nature of Mr. Trump’s clemency proclamation — which covered all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack — meant that he could not impose restrictions on Mr. Rhodes’s movements now that he is out of custody.
Mr. Martin’s decision to go to bat for Mr. Rhodes was unusual for a number of reasons.
First, it was a stunning reversal for the federal prosecutors’ office in Washington, which has overseen all of the Jan. 6 criminal cases and secured the convictions of Mr. Rhodes and other members of the Oath Keepers in late 2022.