Within hours, the Justice Department – which under the Biden administration had secured Rhodes' 2022 conviction – argued that Judge Amit Mehta didn't have the authority to issue that restriction. Trump commuted Rhodes' 18-year sentence Monday along with the sentences of 13 other defendants.

The move, in effect, validated the far-right leader’s defiant claim that his criminal prosecution was a kind of political persecution.

The Department of Justice under the Trump administration has demanded that members of the Oath Keepers militia who have been barred from entering Washington D.C. or the US Capitol be allowed to do so.