A pardoned Capitol riot defendant wants her restitution money back. The Justice Department wants to keep it

By Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — After the protracted demise of the $1.776 billion fund meant to pay perceived victims of government lawfare, prosecutors say they don’t have to give a now-pardoned January 6, 2021, defendant her restitution money back.

It’s all because she never appealed her conviction.

Prosecutors have taken a narrow approach to who is, and who is not, eligible for such a refund or waiver for the fines that were built into January 6 defendants’ sentences to help fund repairs to the Capitol building from damage done during the attack.

The Justice Department’s fight to keep the $2000 in fines paid by riot defendant Felicia Konold — an Arizona woman who pleaded guilty to obstructing law enforcement during the attack — stands in contrast to the administration’s controversial effort to give payouts to the same group of people who Trump has said were victims of DOJ weaponization.

CNN attempted to reach Konold for comment.

As part of a contorted settlement between the IRS and President Donald Trump over his leaked tax information in 2020, the Justice Department announced earlier this year it would establish the nearly $1.8 billion fund for those alleged victims of weaponized prosecutions in the past. The fund was quickly panned by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and became a sticking point in the long battle over Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s effort to get confirmed by the Senate to formally take the top spot at DOJ.

Lawmakers focused on the notion that the fund could be used to give payments to those who attacked the Capitol and forced the entire Congress to evacuate for safety.

Blanche, who announced the fund would be nixed shortly after its formation, eventually ceded to demands by a small contingent of Republican senators to announce in a sworn declaration the fund was dead.

The Acting Attorney General has instead suggested that supposed victims could file civil lawsuits in order to receive payments for alleged past wrongs by the Justice Department — an approach that has proved successful for several Trump allies in recent months.

Who gets what, and why?

Beyond questions of future settlements for those convicted in the attack and now pardoned, some January 6 participants have tried to get back funds they paid as part of their sentencing to fund the multi-million dollar repairs to the Capitol.

Konold, who is one of them, joined a group of Proud Boys marching to the Capitol the day of the attack and was among the first to breach police barricades. She was sentenced to 45 days in prison and ordered to pay the restitution.

On Thursday, prosecutors wrote in a filing that Konold “cannot obtain the return of these funds because her conviction was final at the time of the pardon and has not been vacated.”

Other participants in the attack who appealed their conviction have been given the Justice Department’s blessing to dismiss the restitution payments. In court filings, prosecutors have taken the stance that if an appeal was pending at the time a rioter was pardoned by Trump, they no longer needed to pay up.

The Appeals Court in DC is weighing the issue after a handful of January 6 rioters whose convictions were not finalized before Trump’s blanket pardons have fought to have the restitution payments returned.

In August of last year, a federal judge made the first ruling that a January 6 defendant would get her restitution payments back.

In an opinion explaining his decision, Judge John D. Bates wrote that he had not determined the defendant, Yvonne St Cyr “innocent of the crimes for which she was convicted.”

“Sometimes a judge is called upon to do what the law requires, even if it may seem at odds with what justice or one’s initial instincts might warrant,” Bates wrote.

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