In early 2023, federal juries found members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers guilty of seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious crimes under American law, for their role planning the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has moved to vacate those convictions, a legal maneuver that goes beyond the pardons he gave other January 6 defendants and would effectively wipe the cases off the books.
Troy Edwards is a visiting legal fellow at The Lawfare Institute and a former federal prosecutor who served as deputy chief of the DOJ’s National Security Section for the Eastern District of Virginia. He led the prosecution of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted and received an 18-year prison term but later released after Trump commuted his sentence. Edwards, who resigned after his father-in-law and former FBI Director James Comey was indicted by Trump’s DOJ, joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss what the erasure of the convictions could mean for the future of the Department of Justice and the rule of law.
About our Guest
Troy Edwards served as an Assistant United States Attorney in one of the most sensitive offices in the federal system—the Eastern District of Virginia, which covers the Pentagon and CIA headquarters. As deputy chief of the National Security Section, he handled some of the highest-profile espionage cases in the country. Edwards was a member of the prosecution team that secured the landmark seditious conspiracy conviction of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, for orchestrating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Rhodes received an 18-year sentence—the longest of any January 6th defendant, but was released after the sentence was commuted by President Donald Trump.
Now a visiting legal fellow at The Lawfare Institute, Edwards resigned from the DOJ on September 25, 2025, minutes after his father-in-law, former FBI Director James Comey, was indicted on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction. In a one-sentence resignation letter addressed to U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, he wrote: “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and country, I hereby resign.” Edwards’s wife, Maurene Comey, was dismissed from her position as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York in July 2025 and subsequently sued the Trump administration over her termination. Edwards earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience from Haverford College and his JD from the University of Chicago Law School
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