Justice Department deletes press releases on charges against Jan. 6 rioters

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

May 22, 2026, 11:13 PM EDT


The Justice Department has removed press releases detailing the charges against hundreds of individuals who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot from its website, the department confirmed Friday.

“Nothing ‘quiet’ about it,” the DOJ Rapid Response X account said in a post replying to allegations that the Justice Department had deleted press releases related to Jan. 6. “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration,” the post continued. “We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”

A review by NBC News found that the vast majority of press releases pertaining to Jan. 6 defendants have been removed from the DOJ website as of Friday evening.

The move to wipe hundreds of press releases from the official government site is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to reframe the Jan. 6 siege and to paint the rioters who participated in it as victims.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-department-deletes-press-releases-charges-jan-6-rioters-rcna346613

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Destruction of government property.

[cmmngrnd]

1. These fools act like there is no internet or archiving.

The answer to the question "How stupid are these people?" is "Sadly, words cannot express the depths of it, but here's another example."

There are multiple sites retaining this information, including the wayback machine. , NPR, and lawfareblog.

They're risking a Streisand effect by doing this while accomplishing nothing. Virtually nobody would ever access those articles anyway. Jan 6 deniers won't ever go to a reliable and neutral source like a non-Trump DOJ, people living in the real world use place like DU, and almost nobody of any political persuasion uses the DOJ as a primary source of information.

I guess they area accomplishing some things. Demonstrating stupidity as I mentioned before, and demonstrating how authoritarian they are.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. They are violating NARA Records Management laws

https://www.archives.gov/about/laws/fed-agencies.html

https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/schedules/index.html

DOJ RECORD SCHEDULES - https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/rcs/schedules/index.html?dir=/departments/department-of-justice/rg-0060

[JustAnotherGen]

2. Well . . .

If it didn't happen - then there is no reason for DonOld's Crook Fund.

[JohnnyRingo]

4. It is no longer a "Department of Justice"."

It is Trump's personal Dept of Lawfare. Lady Justice has had her blindfold removed to better find and persecute the enemies of one man.

Again, the republicans accuse democrats of doing exactly what they're doing.

[RainCaster]

6. Lady Justice is grabbing her ankles for TSF

The entire US government has become the play toy of our grifter in chief.

[oldmanlynn]

11. Agreed i have no idea how the department continues after trump

The entire nasty maga movement has tainted United States institutions majorly. Do you fire everybody in the DOJ and then start all over? What can you do? You can’t trust anyone that’s there.

[JohnnyRingo]

12. It's said that whenever he claims democrats are doing something........

...he's doing exactly that.
While he was running he always said Biden was destroying this country. If he didn't get elected there would be nothing left.

Welcome to the Bizzarro World.

[ancianita]

5. Deleting press releases from the previous DOJ is illegal. Those press releases were also put online and are likely

preserved, once on the Internet. I know they were online since I read them.

Since this DOJ can't delete the press releases from the press, here's one from Politico...

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-merrick-b-garland-investigation-january-6th-attack-capitol

Coincidently, CREW earlier posted that this DOJ had done even worse ...

January:
"Deletion of Jan 6 charges database appears to violate the law"
https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/deletion-of-jan-6-charges-database-appears-to-violate-the-law/

April:
The Trump admin wants to put your private data in one place. That’s illegal.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/the-trump-admin-wants-to-put-your-private-data-in-one-place-thats-illegal/

[Kablooie]

7. We are proud ...

To reward those who commit crimes in service to Donald Trump.

[Wednesdays]

8. MAGA: "Jan. 6 never happened."

Also MAGA: "Well, okay, Jan. 6 happened, but they were all liberal agitators trying to make Trump look bad."

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Orwellian. They demand people forget what they know, use language to mean its opposite,

have a cult of personality around their leader, and go to war to demand "patriotic" support from the oppressed masses.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party are dismantling American democracy at a record-breaking pace, according to the latest edition of a long-running project tracking the health of democracies across the world.

“The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times,” write the authors of the V-Dem Institute’s 2026 democracy report. “Under Trump’s presidency the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.” That was the year the Voting Rights Act was passed, and it was also the year most scholars view as the U.S. finally having become a true democracy.


...
But democracy experts have been stunned by the speed of backsliding in the first year of the second Trump term. V-Dem’s data demonstrates that democratic erosion is happening much more rapidly here than it has elsewhere in recent years.

This regression is usually “incremental and often inconspicuous, spanning years or even decades,” the report’s authors write. But “in terms of the speed of autocratization, Trump 2.0 outpaces not only Trump 1.0 but also the most prominent autocrats of the last 25 years,” including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/democracy-trump-russia-putin-dictator-report.html

(and that was before the latest attack on the Voting Rights Act)

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. Another count for articles of impeachment

Everyone saw what happened on TV