The truth is still out there, says a Seattle prosecutor of ‘J6' cases

It was one dicey week for the concepts of ethics or personal responsibility.

It started with the president of the United States taunting the pope as "WEAK on crime" - of all people and of all things.

It ended with the president's lawyers letting the Proud Boys off for smashing up the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

It left me wondering again - is there any through line, any coherent cause and effect, any hypocrisy too great for this administration? Does anything matter?

The Justice Department moved to vacate the convictions of a dozen members of the right-wing Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, including the Seattle-area leader Ethan Nordean. A jury had found him guilty of leading 200 Proud Boys past barricades and into the Capitol to try to stop the counting of electoral votes in the 2020 election.

At the sentencing, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, said this:

"That day broke our tradition of peacefully transferring power. It's among the most precious things that we had as Americans. Notice I said ‘had.' We don't have it anymore. We can't just snap our fingers and get it back.

"You're going to have to be accountable for your role in that."

So much for that.

Not only has any accountability been tossed aside, but Nordean and his fellow Proud Boys are demanding $100 million for their troubles. So now we may end up owing them.

One former federal prosecutor said it's yet another sign from this White House that "political violence is acceptable as long as your politics align.

It turns out that one of the prosecutors on some of the "J6" cases is from Seattle. Will Dreher, 38, was in the U.S. attorney's office for Western Washington when the Capitol raid went down.

"I volunteered on Jan. 7," he says.

He was detailed to D.C. and ended up prosecuting about 25 cases against "Stop the Steal" rioters, including some of Nordean's Proud Boy troopers. (He was not involved in Nordean's seditious conspiracy case.) He's now a corporate attorney and a Democratic candidate for state Legislature in Seattle's 46th District.

In total, nearly 1,300 rioters either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trials. I asked Dreher what the significance is of having all of that be erased.

"It's wrong to say the work is completely undone," he pushed back. "These were facts found by juries. We developed a very clear investigative and public trial record of what happened that day.

"There's no way to undo the stain of that day."

That is the MAGA goal, though - to muddy the record, or, most vaingloriously, to recast the story completely. Take the Proud Boys. They're now … extra proud boys.

"This Brotherhood is forever. … History books will be written with our names," said one of their pardoned leaders, Enrique Tarrio, while posting photos of himself strutting around with Nordean and others.

Noted Dreher, "People should know that a lot of these defendants apologized during their trials."

Meaning that, at least when they were in the dock, they pretended to accept what they did was wrong.

Now they believe they're deserving of reparations, as if they're innocent victims like Japanese Americans locked in camps during World War II.

One of Dreher's cases was a watershed because the defendant was the first to try a "Trump made me do it" argument. The rioter confessed he had stormed the Capitol, but insisted he was so under the influence of Trump's "big lie" that he couldn't be held responsible for his actions.

The jury didn't buy this excuse, convicting him. But in the end, it worked, because now he's pardoned and excused from any responsibility. "Trump made me do it" went from being a humiliating admission to a bragging point.

"These pardons are doing real damage to the rule of law," Dreher said.

The Washington Post interviewed a former J6 prosecutor like Dreher, except theirs "spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation." At least Dreher isn't cowering. People in positions of power being afraid to speak out is a prime reason Trump's lies about elections and democracy continue to hold such sway.

Rewriting the J6 history is just the start of Trump's antidemocratic impulses, Dreher said.

"He has dropped all pretense. He's seeking to force the media, universities, law firms and civil society more broadly into submission," he said.

The week that began with attacks on the pope's crime-fighting résumé also ended with a woman in Miami being awarded $300,000 after she drank 14 tequila shots on a cruise ship and fell down some stairs.

I bring up this out-of-the-blue news tidbit because it's culturally related. People seem untethered from their own actions. If the president can try to overturn an election and not be held to account, and the Proud Boys can carry out an attack on the Capitol on live TV and not be responsible - in fact might get financially rewarded for it as persecuted heroes - then why would drinking 14 tequila shots make one culpable for falling down the stairs?

Dreher has no political experience, and said he's making this throwback concept of accountability a theme of his campaign for state Legislature. He's filed to run against incumbent Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle.

Dreher says the feds let too many polluters and tech companies off the hook for societal harm they cause. While local governments such as Seattle need to acknowledge that "what does deter violent and property crime is increasing the likelihood an offender gets caught, and that's where we have work to do."

Can you get elected talking like that?

We'll see. What's old could be new again. We're in a time, though, where the Proud Boys smashed into the Capitol, chanting (bleep) around, find out," and there's been zero finding out. With approval from the top, they now proudly take no responsibility. In fact we'll probably have to pay them millions as Trump's grievance train rolls on for nearly three more years.

The truth may be out there, as the ex-prosecutor says. But right now it's obscured in one hell of a reality distortion field.

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This story was originally published April 20, 2026 at 4:05 PM.