Pierce County men charged in Capitol attack faced a verdict. Then Trump’s pardon came
The criminal case against two Pierce County men charged for their alleged roles in the January 2021 U.S. Capitol riot was dismissed Tuesday after President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations for everyone accused of participating or convicted of crimes in the mob attack.
Richard Slaughter, an ex-Orting School Board member who resigned shortly after his arrest, and his stepson, Caden Paul Gottfried, were scheduled to have their verdicts read next week following a bench trial held earlier this month, according to court records in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted the government’s motion to dismiss the indictment. The motion was filed by federal prosecutors Monday after Trump gave clemency to more than 1,500 criminal defendants tied to storming the Capitol in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
“The government cites to the Executive Order dated January 20, 2025, Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at Or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, as the reason for this dismissal,” acting U.S. Attorney Edward Martin, Jr. wrote in Monday’s filing.
Trump’s wide-reaching executive order, which had been expected, included case dismissals for people convicted of assaulting police officers as well as far-right extremist group leaders who plotted to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press.
“Obviously, dismissals are flying fast and furious,” attorney Bill Shipley, who represented Slaughter and Gottfried, told The News Tribune on Tuesday.
In an interview, Shipley said that he doubted either of the men could have received a fair jury trial in Washington, D.C., and suggested that both of his clients’ constitutional rights were violated by being forced into a bench trial.
Slaughter and Gottfried were 40 and 20 years old, respectively, at the time of their arrests in Tacoma in October 2022. They had been accused of illegally entering the Capitol grounds and joining others in the Lower West Terrace area on Jan. 6, 2021, federal prosecutors said.
Slaughter was alleged to have taken, or attempted to take, a baton from a Metropolitan Police Department officer and purportedly attacked Capitol police with a “long pole,” according to prosecutors. He allegedly handed chemical spray to another person in the crowd and kept a police shield from an officer after grabbing it from a person who was also accused of rioting.
Gottfried purportedly used his body weight to push against a line of officers, prosecutors said.
Their defense focused on whether Slaughter had used a deadly or dangerous weapon, according to Shipley, who said that such a finding was a major variable since it could dramatically alter sentencing. For Gottfried, the question was whether he tried to push through a police line or simply had opted to escape in the only direction that he could amid a crush of the crowd, Shipley said.
Both men, who faced a combined 13 counts in a superseding indictment, had pleaded not guilty to charges that included assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds.
Following Trump’s election victory in November over then-Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Shipley unsuccessfully sought to pause his clients’ criminal case until Trump took office, citing Trump’s public declarations that he’d pardon defendants in the Capitol riot.
Trump, himself, faced four felony charges related to alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, preceding the Capitol attack, but those charges were dismissed in November due to Justice Department guidelines that prevent prosecution of a sitting president, multiple media outlets reported.
Shipley, who said he represented 91 defendants involved in Jan. 6 cases, didn’t yet have a definitive answer on what to take away from global resolutions of his clients’ cases, believing it would all come into better focus in the days ahead.
“History will judge the rest,” he said.
