One man granted clemency by President Donald Trump for laying siege to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 is now hoping that his pardon will be extended to a separate charge for possession of child pornography.
Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney tweeted Wednesday that the legal counsel for 37 year-old David Paul Daniel of North Carolina is now arguing in federal court that his client's child pornography charge should be thrown out based on what he admitted was an "unprecedented legal question." In the 14-page filing submitted to U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, attorney William Terpening asserted that Trump's January 20 executive order pardoning the approximately 1,500 people charged in connection with January 6 also covers Daniel's alleged possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) due to how it was obtained by law enforcement.
According to Terpening, when police executed a search warrant on Daniel's property and subsequently found an iPhone and a laptop that contained images of a "nude minor female," they were doing so as part of the January 6 charge. He then posited that because Trump pardoned his client for the January 6 charge, the other "derivative" charges that were brought about as a result of the initial charge should be automatically dismissed.
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"A pardon completely exonerates a person — it is as if the conviction that is pardoned was never prosecuted in the first instance," Terpening wrote. "The expansive effect of Trump’s Executive Order in erasing not only Mr. Daniel’s January 6 crime, but also any basis for prosecuting it in the first instance, is apparent from the Executive Order’s plain text, which describes the DC Case as 'a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years' ... The Order’s intent is undisputedly to convey that the DC Case had no legal basis."
Terpening further argued that the Trump administration's Department of Justice has intervened on behalf of other January 6 defendants facing separate charges that were brought about as a result of January 6-related search warrants. The filing noted that in the case of Capitol rioter Elias Costianes — who had illegal weapons seized at his home following the execution of the initial search warrant — the Trump DOJ clarified in federal court that Trump's pardon extended to the gun charge.
Additionally, January 6 defendant Jeremy Brown, who was convicted on both possession of illegal weapons and classified information from his time in the U.S. military, also had his other charges thrown out. Terpening also attempted to bolster his case by looping in the case of Daniel Ball, who was arrested on federal gun charges just one day after Trump handed down his pardon, but later had those charges dismissed by the DOJ.
"Although the crimes with which Costianes, Ball, and Brown were charged in Maryland and Florida were unrelated to their January 6 charges, the government concluded that the Executive Order required their dismissal because they were based on information discovered by the government during January 6 related searches," Terpening wrote. "Mr. Daniel’s pardon in the DC Case requires dismissal of the unrelated charges in this case because the evidence allegedly supporting the instant charges was discovered during a January 6 related search."
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Click here to read Terpening's full filing.