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      Far-right Oath Keepers founder sentenced to 18 years over January 6 attack

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      Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison, after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.Prosecutors sought a 25-year term. Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time served, since his arrest in January 2022.Before handing down the sentence, the US district judge, Amit Mehta, told a defiant Rhodes he posed a continued threat to the US government, saying it was clear he “wants democracy in this country to devolve into violence”.“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta said.Rhodes claimed the prosecution was politically motivated.“I’m a political prisoner and like President Trump my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country,” he said.Rhodes also noted that he never went inside the Capitol on January 6 and insisted he never told anyone else to do so.But members of the Oath Keepers took an active role on 6 January 2021, when a mob incited by Donald Trump smashed its way into the Capitol, attempting to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Prosecutors successfully made the case that Rhodes and his group prepared an armed rebellion, including stashing arms at a Virginia hotel, meant for quick transfer to Washington DC.Other members of the Oath Keepers, some convicted of seditious conspiracy, are due to be sentenced this week and next. Members of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, will face sentencing on similar convictions later this year.Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 attack, including suicides among law enforcement. More than 1,000 arrests have been made and more than 500 convictions secured.In court filings in the Oath Keepers cases, prosecutors said: “The justice system’s reaction to January 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether January 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment.”Like all other forms of Trump’s attempted election subversion, the attack on Congress failed. In the aftermath, Trump was impeached for a second time, for inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted by Senate Republicans.Laying out Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, the House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals to the justice department. The former president still faces potential indictments in state and federal investigations of his election subversion and role in the attack on Congress. Nonetheless, he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.At Thursday’s hearing, speaking for the prosecution, the assistant US attorney Kathryn Rakoczy pointed to interviews and speeches Rhodes has given from jail repeating Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and saying the 2024 election would be stolen too.In remarks just days ago, Rhodes called for “regime change”, Rakoczy said.People “across the political spectrum” want to believe January 6 was an “outlier”, Rakoczy said. “Not defendant Rhodes.”A defense lawyer, Phillip Linder, denied Rhodes gave orders for Oath Keepers to enter the Capitol on January 6. But he told the judge Rhodes could have had many more Oath Keepers come to the Capitol “if he really wanted” to disrupt certification of the electoral college vote.In a first for a January 6 case, Judge Mehta agreed with prosecutors to apply enhanced penalties for “terrorism” under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion”.Judges in previous sentencings had shot down the justice department request for the so-called “terrorism enhancement”, which can lead to a longer prison term, but Mehta said it fitted Rhodes’s case.“Mr Rhodes directed his co-conspirators to come to the Capitol and they abided,” the judge said.Asked if Mehta’s acceptance of the enhancement boded ill for others found guilty of seditious conspiracy, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said prosecutors “argued that the judge should apply the enhancement because the ‘need to deter others is especially strong because these defendants engaged in acts that were intended to influence the government through intimidation or coercion – in other words, terrorism’.“The judge then stated, ‘It’s hard to say it doesn’t apply when someone is convicted of seditious conspiracy.’“Mehta apparently accepted that argument in imposing the sentence today and may well apply it to others who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, as he has heard the evidence presented.” More

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      What is going on with Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis? | Robert Reich

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      The real significance of Ron DeSantis’s presidential announcement on Twitter had little to do with DeSantis but everything to do with Musk.It’s that Twitter, under Musk, has fully embraced the political right.Why is Musk doing this? He acts as if he wants to be the darling of libertarian bros. But he’s really aiming to lead democracy’s foes.Musk wants to crush unions and declare the United States a free-to-make-as-much-as-you-can-on-the-backs-of-working-stiffs zone.He calls himself a “free speech absolutist”, but that’s utter bulltwat. He wants to elevate the speech of people like DeSantis but suppress the speech of workers who want to unionize.He’s even gone along with Turkey’s recent ban on anti-regime comments in the run-up to the Turkish election.DeSantis is not exactly a libertarian himself, of course – unless you define a libertarian as someone who bans books, forces women to give birth, threatens to take trans youth away from parents who approve of them getting gender-affirming care, prohibits teachers from mentioning gender identity or sexual orientation, bars teachers from talking about America’s history of racism, and wreaks vengeance even on Mickey Mouse for opposing his authoritarian policies.What unites Musk and DeSantis isn’t libertarianism at all. It’s authoritarianism.Twitter started to become a rightwing media hot spot when Musk lifted bans on thousands of accounts that had spread disinformation about the pandemic and the 2020 elections.More recently, Tucker Carlson has said he would revive his show on Twitter after losing his Fox News slot (Musk has denied that Twitter has signed a deal with Carlson).It’s also been reported that The Daily Wire, a rightwing, anti-democracy media outlet, will make Twitter the home for all its podcasts.Unquestionably, Twitter is benefiting from the dissatisfaction of the anti-democracy movement with Fox News. Musk can credibly claim to be outside the mainstream rightwing media world of Rupert Murdoch.But the reason Musk wants to be a force on the right is because he wants to be in control.That’s been his business MO since the start. It’s why he refused a seat on Twitter’s board and instead mounted a hostile takeover. It’s why he hates unions.And now Musk wants to control everything else. He wants to dominate the rightwing of American politics.Not content to be the (or among the) richest on the planet, not satisfied with taking over one of the biggest media machines in the world, Musk now wants to impose his will on America and the world directly.Remind you of any other billionaire? Say, the former guy?Musk said Tuesday he isn’t formally backing any Republican candidate. But he is backing Republicans. And you can bet his eye is focused like a laser on the biggest Republican of all.Right now, Musk wants to send Donald Trump a message that he – Musk – has the power to make life difficult for Trump if Trump so much as hints at making life difficult for Musk.Musk knows that the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him. Show him you are even bigger than he is. Have more billions of dollars than he does. Have more millions of Twitter followers than he does.And show him you have power over him by helping Republicans who are opposing him.Which is why Musk is helping DeSantis. And why, earlier this week, Musk retweeted a campaign kickoff video for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.Musk is only 51. Trump is 77. Trump may be the next president, but Musk will outlast him.The US constitution bars Musk from becoming president, as he was born in Pretoria, South Africa. But there’s no end to the power he can wield over America and the world in coming decades.And make no mistake. Musk plans to wield it.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Oath Keepers to receive first seditious conspiracy sentences for January 6

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      The founder of the Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, and members of his anti-government group will be the first January 6 defendants sentenced for seditious conspiracy in hearings beginning this week and expected to set the standard for punishments to follow.Prosecutors will urge the judge on Thursday to put Rhodes behind bars for 25 years, which would be the harshest sentence by far handed down over the US Capitol attack.Describing the Oath Keepers’ actions as “terrorism”, the justice department says stiff punishments are crucial.“The justice system’s reaction to January 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether January 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” prosecutors wrote this month.The hearings will begin on Wednesday with lawyers expected to argue over legal issues and the start of victim impact statements being read.Rhodes, from Granbury, Texas, and the Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs – who were convicted of seditious conspiracy in November – will receive their sentences on Thursday. Six more Oath Keepers will be sentenced this week and next.Rhodes and Meggs were the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty at trial of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as a plot to stop the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Three co-defendants were acquitted of sedition but convicted of obstructing certification of Biden’s victory. Another four Oath Keepers were convicted of sedition in January.Prosecutors are seeking sentences ranging from 10 to 21 years for the Oath Keepers besides Rhodes. The judge canceled sentencing scheduled this week for one defendant, Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, as he weighs whether to overturn a guilty verdict on two charges.Prosecutors are urging the judge to apply enhanced penalties for terrorism, arguing the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion”. Judges have so far rejected a request to apply the so-called “terrorism enhancement” in a handful of January 6 cases but the Oath Keepers case is unlike any others that have reached sentencing.“The defendants were not mere trespassers or rioters, and they are not comparable to any other defendant who has been convicted for a role in the attack on the Capitol,” prosecutors wrote.More than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes stemming from the riot. Just over 500 have been sentenced, more than half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a week to more than 14 years. The longest sentence came earlier this month, for a man with a long criminal record who attacked police with pepper spray and a chair.The sentences for the Oath Keepers may signal how much time prosecutors will seek for leaders of the Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy this month. They include the former national chairman Enrique Tarrio, perhaps the most high-profile person charged. The Proud Boys are scheduled to be sentenced in August and September.Prosecutors made the case that Rhodes and his followers prepared an armed rebellion to keep Biden out of the White House. Over seven weeks, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a “bloody” civil war and warned the Oath Keepers may have to “rise up in insurrection”.Jurors watched video of Rhodes’s followers wearing combat gear and shouldering through the crowd in military-style stack formation before forcing their way into the Capitol. They saw surveillance video at a Virginia hotel where prosecutors said Oath Keepers stashed weapons for “quick reaction force” teams which never deployed.Rhodes, who did not go inside the Capitol, told jurors there was never any plan to attack the Capitol and his followers who did went rogue. His lawyers urged the judge to sentence him to roughly 16 months already served. Attorneys argued that Rhodes’s writings and statements are “protected political speech”. More

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      DC officer leaked information to Proud Boys leader, indictment alleges

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      A Washington DC police officer was arrested on Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation’s capital.An indictment alleges that Metropolitan police department lieutenant Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner’s destruction.Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors said was a plot to keep the then president, Donald Trump, in the White House after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements.The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators.Lamond is expected in court on Friday and is on administrative leave.Lamond, who supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau, was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys.His attorney, Mark Schamel, didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.Schamel has previously said that Lamond’s job was to communicate with a variety of groups protesting in Washington, and his conduct with Tarrio was never inappropriate and said his client “doesn’t share any of the indefensible positions” of extremist groups.The Metropolitan police department said it would do an internal review after the federal case against Lamond is resolved.Lamond’s name repeatedly came up in the Capitol riot trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders.Messages introduced at Tarrio’s trial appeared to show a close rapport between the two men, with Lamond texting “hey brother”.Tarrio’s lawyers had wanted to call Lamond as a witness, but were stymied by the investigation into Lamond.Lamond used the Telegram messaging platform to give Tarrio information about law enforcement activity around July 2020, according to prosecutors.In December 2020, Lamond told Tarrio about where competing antifascist activists were expected to be.Jurors who convicted Tarrio heard testimony that Lamond frequently provided the Proud Boys leader with internal information about law enforcement operations before Proud Boys stormed the Capitol. More

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      Proud Boys and Oath Keepers: what is their future with top leaders jailed?

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      The recent convictions of the Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has raised questions about the future of both extremist groups and what role they may or not play in the future path of violent extremism in the US.Researchers who monitor American far-right organizations said the Oath Keepers have in effect been decimated, with only a handful of chapters remaining, while the Proud Boys are ramping up efforts to protest at LGBTQ events and taking cues from larger national conservative conversations about hostility to transgender rights.“The impact of criminal litigation, really any litigation, legal accountability has been quite different [for both groups],” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research and analysis for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “So I don’t know that the solution for all groups engaged in violence and conspiracy are going to have the same outcome from the same accountability measure.”Carroll Rivas said since the arrests of Rhodes and other Oath Keepers’ members, it only took about five months for the group to go from nearly 100 chapters to just a handful remaining active. “I can tell you I don’t see as many Oath Keeper bumper stickers around,” she reported.The Oath Keepers, Carroll Rivas explained, were structured with their leader, Stewart Rhodes, assuming all the primary roles. Carroll Rivas describes Rhodes’s conviction and potential 25-year prison sentence as cutting off the “head of the dragon” and undermining the group’s strategy of recruiting law enforcement, military veterans, and public officials.They were “quasi-following some of the rules” with a legal structure and non-profit status, Carroll Rivas said, and their strategy focused on a purposeful recruitment of “people who are respected members of society” in a greater attempt to wield power. Oath Keeper members joined something they didn’t necessarily believe would participate in unacceptable activities, let alone anything criminal, she explained.“When something happens like January 6, when things get out of hand, it pushes the everyday membership away from the organization itself, not from its beliefs, but it definitely pushed them away from the Oath Keepers’ name.”Experts are most worried about the splintering of the far right when it comes to people who then act alone or in small groups unaffiliated to anyone else: a phenomenon that is extremely hard for law enforcement to track and infiltrate.There’s a “steady drumbeat” of people not trusting the government, engaging in conspiracy theories and grievances, and encouraging people to arm themselves, Siegel said, and a world of people online that share that view. That means there are alternatives to the Oath Keepers for people still wanting to be engaged in far-right activities.“Will those people look elsewhere for more extreme, like-minded groups or will they lay low? It remains to be seen,” said Warren Siegel, vice-president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.Today, extremists “can choose their own adventure”, pulling bits of ideology from white supremacy and anti-government groups. As a result, Siegel said: “There is a lot more opportunity to create strains of anti-government theory that will animate people into action and it’s much harder to track.”Worryingly, researchers are finding it difficult to know when a potential extremist is moving from rhetoric to action. “When the language of extremism is so similar to general public discussion, it’s more difficult to know where the next attack is coming from,” Siegel said.But the Proud Boys, unlike the Oath Keepers, have not splintered.In the wake of Tarrio’s conviction, the Proud Boys are ramping up their activity, and trying to disrupt LGBTQ+ events, such as protesting at drag queen story hours. The Proud Boys, which have many local chapters throughout the country and decentralized leadership, have realized they don’t need to travel thousands of miles and can “shift the social norm in their backyard”, said Siegel.He added: “They glom on to a contentious public issue in order to try to attract people.” Siegel argued that the Proud Boys were doubling down in their attempts to target the LGBTQ+ events because of the “the baseless narrative that LGBTQ community are grooming children”.Unlike the Oath Keepers, which had a specific anti-government ideology, Siegel explained the Proud Boys were taking strains from different ideologies, such as the rise of Christian nationalism and opposition to what they view as the radical left.The Proud Boys are also not the only extremist group that is targeting the LGBTQ+ community, Siegel said. White supremacists with a history of violence are engaging in it almost weekly. Siegel called it a “toxic combination” of groups with a history of violence and hateful ideology, saying it was the “challenge of our time” to mitigate that threat.Researchers expressed concerns about Proud Boys’ actions in the aftermath of January 6 and Tarrio’s conviction because of their long record of engaging in violence.“Part of their ethos, part of the attraction to others is that they are shamelessly militant,” said Siegel. Violent extremes and grievances against the government are here to stay, he explained, saying the question is how the US can minimize their impact. “Accountability is part of that despite how it’s spun,” he argued.America is “not the healthiest democracy right now”, Siegel explained. “How do you win hearts and minds in this country? There is no fairytale ending to an insurrection.” More

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      Schumer decries Republican senator’s ‘revolting’ remarks on white nationalists

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      The Democratic US Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, condemned as “utterly revolting” remarks in which the Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville appeared to defend white nationalists in the US military.In an interview with the Alabama station WBHM, published on Monday, Tuberville was asked: “Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?”He answered: “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.”The Senate armed forces committee member added: “We are losing in the military so fast. And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that don’t believe in our agenda, as Joe Biden’s agenda.”Tuberville is currently attempting to impose his own agenda on the US military, by blocking promotions and appointments in protest of Pentagon rules about abortion access.On Thursday, Schumer said: “Does Senator Tuberville honestly believe that our military is stronger with white nationalists in its ranks? I cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story.”Previously, Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund, said: “I hope we are not getting so numb that we refrain from demanding that Mr Tuberville’s colleagues in the Senate condemn his remarks.”Schumer added: “I urge Senator Tuberville to think about the destructive spectacle he is creating in the Senate. His actions are dangerous.”On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Tuberville said he was “being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military”.A Tuberville spokesperson told the Washington Post the senator “resents the implication that the people in our military are anything but patriots and heroes”.The same spokesperson told NBC Tuberville “has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor” and “was expressing doubt about this being a problem in the military”.Reports have shown the US military has a problem with white nationalism and white supremacy, despite the Pentagon having prohibited “active participation” in extremist groups since 1996.In October 2020, a Pentagon report warning of a problem with white supremacists in the military was sent to Congress. It was released in 2021.In February 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, co-published documents showing one in five applicants to one white supremacist group claimed ties to the US military.On Thursday, Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said it was “abhorrent that Senator Tuberville would argue that white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, while he also threatens our national security by holding all pending DoD military and civilian nominations.“Extremist behavior has no place in our military. None.”Fact-checking Tuberville, WBHM, an NPR station, noted Pentagon efforts “to keep extremists, particularly fascists, out of the military”.The station also fact-checked a remark about “what [Joe Biden’s] done to our military with the woke ideas, with the [critical race theory] that we’re teaching in our military”.Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. Republicans have turned it into an electoral wedge issue.WBHM said: “The US military is not requiring that CRT be taught and there is little evidence that it’s being discussed much at all in the ranks. According to Military Times, the one instance in which it is being used in an educational setting is at the US Military Academy at West Point.” More

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      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

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      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      Proud Boys: four found guilty of seditious conspiracy over Capitol attack

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      Four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, were on Thursday convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and leading the January 6 Capitol attack, in a desperate effort to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.The verdicts handed down in federal court in Washington marked a major victory for the US justice department in the last of its seditious conspiracy cases related to the January 6 attack. Prosecutors previously secured convictions against members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right group.Seditious conspiracy is rarely used but became the central charge against the Proud Boys defendants after the FBI identified them as playing crucial roles in helping storm the Capitol in an effort to interrupt and stop the congressional certification of electoral results.“Evidence presented at trial detailed the extent of the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and the central role these defendants played setting into motion the unlawful events of that day,” attorney general Merrick Garland later said at a news conference at justice department headquarters.“We have secured the convictions of leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, specifically conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power. Our work will continue,” Garland said.Those convicted now await sentencing. The verdicts were partial, and hours after the initial four were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the jury found another Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a window to gain entry to the Capitol, not guilty of seditious conspiracy.Tarrio, who was not in Washington for the Capitol attack, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. All five were convicted of obstructing an official proceeding.The trial, which lasted more than three months and tested the scope of the sedition law, was particularly fraught for the defense, the prosecution and the presiding US district court judge, Timothy Kelly. Clashes in court and motions for mistrial were frequent.Trump played an outsized role in the trial, given the reverence the Proud Boys accorded the former president. In closing arguments, the prosecution said they acted as “Donald Trump’s army” to “keep their preferred leader in power” after rejecting Joe Biden’s victory.The former president has long been considered the lynchpin for the involvement of the Proud Boys and others in the Capitol attack when he called for a “wild” protest on 6 January 2021 in an infamous December 2020 tweet and told supporters to “fight like hell” for his cause.More than a thousand arrests have been made in connection to the Capitol attack and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans. He still faces state and federal investigations of his attempted election subversion.In court, prosecutors said Tarrio and his top lieutenants used Trump’s December tweet as a call to arms and started putting together a cadre that they called the “Ministry of Self-Defense” to travel to Washington for the protest, according to private group chats and recordings of discussions the FBI obtained.Around 20 December 2020, Tarrio created a chat called “MOSD Leaders Group” – described by Tarrio as a “national rally planning committee” – that included Nordean, Biggs and Rehl. The chat was used to plan a “DC trip” where all would dress in dark tones, to remain incognito.The prosecution argued that Tarrio’s text messages about “Seventeen seventy six”, in reference to the year of American independence from Britain, suggested the leadership of the Proud Boys saw their January 6 operation as a revolutionary force.Lacking evidence in the hundreds of thousands of texts about an explicit plan to storm or occupy the Capitol, the prosecution used two cooperating witnesses from the Proud Boys to make the case that the defendants worked together in a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.The first witness, Jeremy Bertino, told the jury the Proud Boys had a penchant for violence and there was a tacit understanding that they needed to engage in an “all-out revolution” to stop Biden taking office, testimony meant to directly support a sedition charge.The second witness, Matthew Greene, told the jury he did not initially understand why the Proud Boys marched from the Washington monument to the Capitol to be among the first people at the barricades surrounding Congress, instead of going to Trump’s speech near the White House.Once the Proud Boys led the charge from the barricades to the west front of the Capitol, Pezzola using a police riot shield to smash a window, Greene said he realized there may have been a deliberate effort to lead the January 6 riot.The prosecution persuaded the judge to allow them to use a novel legal strategy: that though the Proud Boys leaders did not really engage in violence themselves – Tarrio was not even in Washington – they got other rioters to do so, using them as “tools” of their insurrection conspiracy.The defense protested the ruling allowing prosecutors to show the jury videos of other low-level Proud Boys and random rioters committing violence at the Capitol, saying that it amounted to making the five defendants guilty by association.Notwithstanding the other evidence, the defense’s complaint was that if the jury had to assess whether the defendants’ limited use of violence alone met the threshold to “destroy by force the government of the United States”, the outcome might have been affected. 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