(Reuters) -A federal judge on Monday dropped restrictions on Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers who was freed after being sentenced over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and some others in the group from entering Washington, D.C., a court order showed.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta lifted his order after finding that President Donald Trump’s decision to cut short their prison sentences also released them from a term of court supervision.
Mehta’s order, imposed on Friday, had required Rhodes and seven of his co-defendants to seek court permission before visiting Washington, D.C., or entering the grounds around the U.S. Capitol.
Rhodes and his co-defendants were released from prison last week as part of Trump’s order granting clemency to all nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack on the Capitol.
Rhodes was spotted at the Capitol last week, the day after his release and before Mehta imposed the restrictions. A Trump-appointed federal prosecutor urged the judge to lift the restrictions.
Rhodes and seven other Oath Keepers had been convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting to violently oppose the transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 election.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Costas Pitas; editing by Rami Ayyub and Leslie Adler)
