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      Capitol rioter caught after FBI finds recording of him boasting to Uber driver

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      Capitol rioter caught after FBI finds recording of him boasting to Uber driverA 15-month long investigation resulted in Jerry Braun’s arrest on 12 April; he’s been charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct On 6 January 2021, Jerry Braun hailed an Uber in Washington DC and got in the car, nursing a bleeding eye wound. The Uber driver noticed and asked, “So, has it been violent all day?”“Well it started around, right when I got there. I tore down the barricades,” Braun bragged.The conversation, captured on video by the driver’s recording device installed on the dashboard, triggered a 15-month long investigation by the FBI. Earlier this month, on 12 April, Braun was finally arrested by federal authorities and charged with violent entry or disorderly conduct, obstruction during civil disorder, and entering and remaining on restricted grounds, according to an affidavit by Lucas Bauers, FBI special agent.January 6 ‘was a coup organized by the president’, says Jamie RaskinRead moreBraun boasted openly to the Uber driver about his involvement in the deadly riots, which resulted in the deaths of five people. When he explained he’d torn down the barricades, the driver asked, “You did? Why?”“Well, because, so we could get to the Capitol,” Braun replied.The driver asked, “Well, how’d that work out for ya?”“Well, it looks like, uh, Biden’s gonna be our president,” said Braun.The Uber driver’s tip to the authorities identified Braun as “Jerry Last Name Unknown”, according to court documents. The car dropped him off at a Holiday Inn in Arlington, Virginia; authorities searched the booking records to discover that Braun had checked in as “JD Braun” on 5 January and checked out two days later. He had listed his phone number and an address in South El Monte, California.Authorities then compared the Uber image of Braun with a California Department of Motor Vehicles photo of him. With a positive match, they began to pore over images and video footage taken on the day of the riot, searching for Braun.“Agents reviewed several images on the webpage, including one of the digital images that depicts an individual with a white beard, wearing a black face mask covering his nose and chin, black sunglasses, a black beanie hat, black gloves, and a dark colored jacket with a hood,” said the affidavit.“The individual’s white beard is coming out from underneath the black mask, and a backpack shoulder strap is seen over the individual’s left shoulder,” it added.Authorities also noticed a pocket holding a pen and paper with graphics “near the individual’s left shoulder”. Upon enlarging the image, they found the following text: “23-359-4”, “Ask For JD”, and a website, shotgunshock.com – the website of a South El Monte-based store that sells motorcycle air-suspension systems.Officials accessed the Google cached version of the site and found an email address, shotgunshock@yahoo.com – which turned out to be the same address associated with Braun’s Uber account – and a phone number that was registered with the AT&T Corporation under “Jerry Braun”, according to court documents.The affidavit included screenshots of video footage that showed Braun “physically struggling with law-enforcement officers using a barricade”. At one point, Braun is also seen with a wooden plank in his hands. “The officer body camera videos show Braun in possession of the wood plank, controlling the wood plank and maneuvering the wood plank towards law enforcement officers in an aggressive manner,” the affidavit said.“In one instance … Braun extends the wood plank and physically strikes an individual who is wearing a helmet with the text ‘PRESS’ displayed across the front (the photographer) and appears to be taking photographs with a camera,” it added.“Braun and the photographer appear to exchange words. Braun then strikes the photographer with his left hand, and subsequently strikes the photographer once more with the wood plank.”On 8 November, authorities executed a search warrant in Braun’s California residence and found clothing he appeared to wear at the riot. They also seized Braun’s cellphone, which included a selfie of his eye wound as well as text message exchanges in which Braun wrote, “Occupied the capitol”, and “Hand to hand combat”, in reference to videos he took at the riot.When authorities asked Braun if he had anything to say during the search, Braun replied, “Guilty.” Authorities then asked him what he was guilty of, to which he said, “Everything.”More than 800 people have been charged for their involvement in the riot, of which more than 250 have so far pled guilty.TopicsUS Capitol attackWashington DCUS politicsUberDonald TrumpJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Former Virginia police officer convicted of storming US Capitol

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      Former Virginia police officer convicted of storming US CapitolThomas Robertson was found guilty of all six counts he faced stemming from his participation in the 6 January 2021 riots A federal jury has convicted a former Virginia police officer of storming the US Capitol with another off-duty officer, to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.Proud Boys member pleads guilty to role in US Capitol attackRead moreJurors on Monday convicted former Rocky Mount police officer Thomas Robertson of all six counts he faced stemming from the 6 January riot, including charges that he interfered with police officers at the Capitol and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon – a large wooden stick.His sentencing hearing was not immediately scheduled.Robertson’s jury trial was the second among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The first ended last month with jurors convicting a Texas man, Guy Reffitt, of all five counts in his indictment.Robertson did not testify at his trial, which started 5 April. Jurors deliberated for several hours over two days before reaching their unanimous verdict.One juror, who spoke to the Associated Press only on condition of anonymity, said as she left the courthouse, “I think the government made a really compelling case and the evidence was fairly overwhelming.”Defense attorney Mark Rollins said Robertson will appeal the jury’s verdict. “While Mr Robertson disagrees with the jury’s decision, he respects the rule of law,” Rollins said in a statement.A key witness for prosecutors in his case was Jacob Fracker, who also served on the Rocky Mount police force and viewed Robertson as a mentor and father figure.Fracker was scheduled to be tried alongside Robertson before he pleaded guilty last month to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with authorities. Fracker testified Thursday that he had hoped the mob that attacked the Capitol could overturn the 2020 presidential election results.Robertson was charged with six counts: obstruction of Congress, interfering with officers during a civil disorder, entering a restricted area while carrying a dangerous weapon, disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted area while carrying a dangerous weapon, disorderly or disruptive conduct inside the Capitol building, and obstruction. The last charge stems from his alleged post-riot destruction of cellphones belonging to him and Fracker.During the trial’s closing arguments Friday, assistant US attorney Risa Berkower said Robertson went to Washington and joined a “violent vigilante mob” because he believed the election was stolen from then-president Donald Trump. He used the wooden stick to interfere with outnumbered police before he joined the crowd pouring into the Capitol, she said.“The defendant did all this because he wanted to overturn the election,” Berkower said.Rollins conceded that Robertson broke the law when he entered the Capitol during the riot. He encouraged jurors to convict Robertson of misdemeanor offenses but urged them to acquit Robertson of felony charges that he used the stick as a dangerous weapon and that he intended to stop Congress from certifying the electoral college vote.“There were no plans to go down there and say, ‘I’m going to stop Congress from doing this vote,”’ Rollins said.Fracker testified that he initially believed that he was merely trespassing when he entered the Capitol building. However, he ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring with Robertson to obstruct Congress.The town of Rocky Mount, which is about 25 miles south of Roanoke and has roughly 5,000 residents, fired Robertson and Fracker after the riot.TopicsUS Capitol attackWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican governor blasts Trump as ‘crazy’ during Washington roast

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      Republican governor blasts Trump as ‘crazy’ during Washington roastChris Sununu of New Hampshire makes remarks at event noted for tradition of roasting politicians with cutting comedy speeches A Republican governor has blasted Donald Trump as “fucking crazy” and said if he was ever committed to a mental institution “he ain’t getting out”.Chris Sununu of New Hampshire delivered the remarks at Saturday’s Gridiron Club dinner in Washington DC, an event noted for its tradition of roasting politicians with satirical and often cutting comedy speeches.But the skit is unlikely to endear Sununu to the notoriously prickly one-term former US president, who once sat “red faced and huffy” under a similar barrage from Barack Obama at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011.Trump’s decision to run for president in 2016 was attributed by many as a desire to gain revenge over Obama for the humiliation he endured.Sununu’s comments were part of a broadside of humor directed at Trump, which included a recollection of traveling in a limousine together from a New Hampshire airport to a campaign rally.Trump, according to Sununu, was reveling in the presence of supporters waving flags along the route and proudly pointed one out.“I can’t help but notice the guy he pointed at, the sign he’s holding says, ‘Fuck Trump’,” Sununu joked to loud applause.Trump did not attend Saturday’s dinner and Sununu’s sustained onslaught was brutal.“You know, he’s probably going to be the next president. Nah, I’m just kidding, he’s fucking crazy,” Sununu said, according to Politico.“The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way, I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out.”If Trump was the main target, several of his political allies also came under fire, including the Texas senator Ted Cruz, whom Sununu mocked for his appearance. “What is with Ted? You see that beard?” he said. “He looks like Mel Gibson after a DUI or something.”The My Pillow founder Mike Lindell, a Trump loyalist who has been quick to support the ex-president’s big lie that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, was also skewered.“This guy’s head is stuffed with more crap than his pillows. His stuff is crap. I mean, it’s absolute crap. You only find that kind of stuff in the Trump Hotel,” Sununu said.And Sununu advised Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary reportedly about to take a job with MSNBC, to seek her money upfront, in a jibe at the network’s ratings.Sununu wasn’t the only speaker taking shots at Trump. Joe Biden sent in a video that was played to attendees apologizing for his absence.“I really wanted to be with you tonight, but the truth is I just couldn’t find a seven hour and 37 minute gap in my schedule,” Biden said, a reference to the missing period of time in Trump’s White House communications log on 6 January last year while his supporters were ransacking the US Capitol.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsRepublicansNew HampshireDonald TrumpUS politicsWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

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      Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police say

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      Five sets of fetal remains found in anti-abortion activist’s home, DC police sayLauren Handy claims she gained access to organ bank at university in Seattle but authorities haven’t disclosed source of fetuses Five sets of human fetal remains were recovered from the Washington DC home of an anti-abortion activist after a raid, the capital’s Metropolitan police department confirmed to the Guardian on Thursday.The activist, a woman named Lauren Handy, 28, is a leader of the group Progressive Anti-Abortion uprising (PAAU) and has described herself as a “Catholic anarchist” in the past.Local television station WUSA9 reported remains were carried out in red biohazard bags on Wednesday. Handy’s only comment at the time was: “People will freak out when they hear.”Although the authorities have not disclosed the source of the fetal remains, Handy recently claimed to have gained access to an organ bank at the University of Washington in Seattle. Separately, she was indicted on Wednesday for forcing entry into a Washington DC abortion clinic in 2020 October.“On March 9th myself & [sic] fellow activists gained access to University of Washington’s fetal organ labs & freezers,” Handy claimed on Twitter on 23 March. She also retweeted pictures posted by PAAU that show the contents of a walk-in deep freezer.The university said it plans to release a statement but would not confirm whether the pictures were authentic. It also said that university authorities were investigating whether anything was missing from the lab.On Wednesday, federal prosecutors indicted Handy on charges of blockading a Washington DC abortion clinic, where she allegedly claimed to be a patient to gain entry. She and eight co-defendants could face up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 in fines if found guilty.The news comes as conservative states across the country rush to limit women’s access to abortion, in anticipation of a forthcoming supreme court decision expected to severely curtail women’s right to terminate a pregnancy.Conversely, some Democratic-led states have worked to enshrine the right to abortion in state law.Current federal law requires states to allow abortion until a fetus can survive outside the womb, generally regarded as 24 weeks gestation, because of a decision in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade.TopicsAbortionWashington DCUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Truck convoy loops around Washington DC to protest Covid restrictions

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      Truck convoy loops around Washington DC to protest Covid restrictionsThe ‘people’s convoy’ of around 1,000 vehicles threaten a week of traffic disruptions around US capital A long line of huge semi-articulated trucks, recreational vehicles and cars was circling Washington DC, on Sunday, in preparation for what their protesting drivers have pledged will be a week of traffic disruption around the US capital aligned around a loose collection of demands, including the end to all coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions.From its temporary base at a speedway vehicle racing site in Hagerstown, 80 miles north-west in Maryland, organizers of what they term the “People’s Convoy” of around 1,000 vehicles have said they plan to welcome the new work week by driving slowly around Washington on the already notoriously-congested Beltway, or ring road, at the minimum legal speed in an attempt to get their message across to national politicians.The convoy, a spin-off of trucker protests further north that have snarled Ottawa and disrupted Canadian transport arteries to the US, began assembling in California last week.As it has made its way east, it has picked up similarly mobile, ideologically-aligned, fellow-travelers along the way.But America is already rapidly releasing its citizens from a patchwork of pandemic restrictions and Covid mandates as the most recent surge of infections subsides in many states and officials and the public begin talking of the waning pandemic.The changing circumstances is now prompting convoy organizers to adapt their demands to a more free-ranging basket of aspirations and motives.Some participants said the destination was reason enough to make the trek. At the speedway on Friday night, one participant who described himself as the lead trucker told a cheering crowd he would drive his truck into the heart of the American capital.But it remained unclear if the convoy plans to drive into the small area occupied by Washington DC, itself, or snarl masses of government workers and lawmakers on their morning and evening Beltway road commutes across the states immediately neighboring the District of Columbia as they head for their offices where they run the nation’s affairs of state.US law enforcement agencies are paying attention. A previous mobile protest called Stop the Tires [denoting the US spelling of tyres] morphed into a “Stop the Steal” demonstration supporting Donald Trump’s false claim that he had been fraudulently denied victory in the November 2020 election.And that in turn became part of the January 6 insurrection riot at the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Trump, the then Republican president, as they tried to overturn the official certification by the US Congress of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory.“I decided to create a Facebook page where me and my buddies could gather to shoot the s**t about the policies that will be implemented if Trump is no longer the president,” StoptheTires2020 founder Jeremy Rewoldt told The Trucker publication in November 2020.At the speedway site, the drivers said their frustrations included workplace vaccine mandates and other pandemic measures. The crowds chanted anti-Biden slogans and displayed support for Trump.The gathering appeared much like a Trump rally, with a giant American flag slung between cranes attached to the beds of semi-articulated trucks.Many vehicles bore license plates from across the US; many drivers were honking their horns, a tactic that drove Ottawa residents to near distraction and caused an Ontario superior court to issue a 10-day ban on horn blowing.The US Department of Homeland Security has said it is coordinating with local authorities to prepare for the convoy’s arrival and warning that the truckers could hinder emergency services.At their Hagerstown meeting point, an estimated 1,000 protesters gathered Sunday to hear details of the plan. Kicking off with a prayer service during which a pastor told them they were “heroes”, the truckers heard from organizer Brian Brase who instructed them to drive between 45 and 55 miles per hour and stay in one line on the roads to and around Washington in order to best show the size of the convoy.They raised their morning coffees in salute before setting off for the capital, reported The Washington Post.Brase said the drivers planned to circle the capitol’s ring-road twice on Sunday and repeat that pattern on successive days. “We don’t want to shut DC down,” Brase told the newspaper.“We’re not anti-vaxxers. We’re not. We just want freedom, freedom. We want to choose. We just want the choice. So tomorrow is a basically a show of just how big we are and how serious we are.” Brase added that it was not clear how long the protest convoy would last.But he told the drivers, who are mostly white, middle-aged men, to celebrate the distance they had traveled, without instructions about what to do at their destination or what that destination might be.Without a destination or denouement in mind, the truckers on Sunday appeared destined to circle until further notice.Above the blare of horns, Brase described the situation as “very fluid”.TopicsWashington DCProtestCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Censuring Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger Sets Off Republican Food Fight

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      Punishing Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger was a blunder, many in the party say.Republicans had Democrats right where they wanted them: on the ropes.Then on Friday, the Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two House Republicans on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The text of the resolution made no distinction between peaceful protesters and those who stormed the Capitol, referring to that day’s events simply as “legitimate political discourse.” The R.N.C. also backed a primary challenge against Cheney, whose high-profile criticism of Donald Trump has made her a top target on the right.It was one of those polarizing moments that forced other Republicans to react, with some — notably, a bunch of sitting U.S. senators — denouncing the national committee’s move as “wrong” and “absurd.”In the view of many Republicans, censuring two of their own was much like that old saw attributed to Charles Maurice de Tallyrand-Périgord, the 19th-century French diplomat: Worse than a crime, it was also a mistake.As President Biden grapples with soaring inflation, a pandemic that isn’t yet over and general public malaise over the two, why change the subject?“Certainly it wasn’t the right thing to do, and certainly it wasn’t the politically smart thing to do,” said Josh Venable, a former deputy finance director for the R.N.C. “It doesn’t take David Axelrod or Karl Rove to figure that out.”Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and a man who chooses his words carefully, rejected the R.N.C.’s decision on Tuesday.“We saw what happened,” he said. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”‘When we became the news’This is the kind of intramural food fight that the press loves — and political operatives despise when their own party is on the proverbial menu.“When I was at the R.N.C. in 2010, our worst days were when we became the news,” said Doug Heye, a Republican communications consultant. “G.O.P. senators and members know this, and it’s why you’re seeing them speak out.”But while Cheney has Republican friends in the Senate, she has few, if any, in the House. Allies of Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, see her as a political opportunist who has made their lives more difficult — a thoughtless colleague who failed to appreciate his attempts after the 2020 election to shield her from the wrath of her colleagues on the right.Fielding a question on the controversy on Tuesday, Representative Elise Stefanik, who replaced Cheney as the third-ranking House Republican last year, offered a curt response. “My reaction is the R.N.C. has every right to take any action,” she said, “and the position I have is that you’re ultimately held accountable to voters in your district.”Translation: Cheney deserves to lose her seat, and if the Republican Party wants to aid in the process, so be it.The Trump questionThere’s a lot going on here worth unpacking.One obvious motive behind censuring Cheney and Kinzinger was to place them outside the bounds of respectable Republican Party company. Their presence on the Jan. 6 committee is a constant source of irritation for the party, giving Democrats bipartisan cover for an investigation that Republicans have sought to cast as a partisan vendetta.But the larger point of tension is the same existential question that the Republican Party has been wrestling with since 2015, when a certain New York real estate mogul glided down that golden escalator: What to do about Donald Trump? And whose view of the party should prevail — his, or those of establishment leaders like McConnell?Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as former communications director in Trump’s White House before quitting over his stolen election claims, said the R.N.C.’s censure of Cheney and Kinzinger would “damage the Republican Party more broadly and going into 2024.”She’s among around 150 Republicans who signed a statement this week condemning the move as a betrayal of the party’s “founding principles” and a signal that it “no longer welcomes people of conscience.”‘An opportunity lost’Then there are Republicans who express a more parochial concern — a party consumed with internal strife will have a harder time defeating Democrats in the upcoming midterms.“Americans are scared of the future because of inflation, because of crime, and what do we talk about? A stolen election,” said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist in Colorado.As Matt Continetti, the former editor of the Free Beacon, a conservative website, put it, “Any minute Republicans spend re-litigating 2020 or downplaying the events of Jan. 6, 2021, is an opportunity lost.”Chris Stirewalt, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the censure could be a sign that Republicans are getting too confident about the prospects of a “red wave” election in the fall.“Democrats are certainly still in line for a serious thumping this year, but it is now possible to see how — if the economy and virus keep moving in the right direction — divisions of this kind of ugliness could screw up Republicans’ chances at a big win,” he said.What to read tonightNate Cohn analyzes recent polling that found that “the desire to return to normalcy has approached or even overtaken alarm about” Covid-19 itself.Prosecutors released a “revealing glimpse of their strategy” for the first trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Alan Feuer reports. Their evidence includes surveillance videos and text messages.The Secret Service escorted Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, out of Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., because of a bomb threat. The school was also evacuated.LISTENING POSTA protest in Brooklyn on Monday showed solidarity with Canadian truckers.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTruckin’Fox News was of one mind on Monday evening: America needs a movement of disaffected truckers just like the one in Canada.Tucker Carlson used his monologue to celebrate the Canadian truckers, whose protests against vaccine mandates have paralyzed Ottawa and threatened the flow of trade with the United States. Tech companies, Carlson complained, are censoring their online organizing efforts while mainstream media outlets are supposedly ignoring the story.“Instead, everyone in New York and D.C. and Los Angeles is cheering on the national security state and its alliance with Silicon Valley as they come together to crush a human rights movement,” he said.Laura Ingraham used the truckers mainly to criticize CNN for its coverage of what she lauded as “Canada’s expanding freedom convoy.”“The regime media knows exactly what’s happening in Canada and it scares the heck out of them,” Ingraham said. “Just think: Honking, really loud honking, may keep Joe from his 12 hours of sleep a night.”It’s hard to say how many people are ready to take up the cause.One of the main groups calling for a truckers’ protest in Washington, which calls itself “The People’s Convoy,” has nearly 50,000 followers on Facebook and another 40,000 on Telegram. Another group, “Convoy to D.C. 2022,” had more than 130,000 members before Facebook shut it down for violating the site’s policies on vaccine misinformation. Several truckers’ groups have announced plans to drive to Washington to protest vaccine mandates on March 1.Canadian researchers have linked the truckers to conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists, and have noted how much of the support for their sit-in has come from the United States.Jared Holt, a researcher who studies extremist movements, said the online activity appeared to be aimed at “manufacturing sentiment” that wasn’t fully organic. It reminded him of the recent demonstration by anti-vaccine advocates on the National Mall, which drew a modest crowd in late January.“They’re hoping they can animate the imagination of similarly minded people here,” Holt said.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, evacuated from school after bomb threat

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      Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, evacuated from school after bomb threatSecond gentleman was at Dunbar high school in DC for Black History Month event when he was escorted out Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, was whisked out of an event Tuesday at a Washington high school by Secret Service agents following an apparent bomb threat.Emhoff was at Dunbar high school for an event in commemoration of Black History Month. He was in the school’s museum for about five minutes before a member of his security detail approached him saying, “We have to go.” Emhoff was removed from the building into his waiting motorcade.Students and educators at the school were instructed to leave the school, with an announcement saying, “Evacuate the building.”District of Columbia public schools spokesman Enrique Gutierrez said there was a bomb threat. It was not known if it was related to Emhoff’s visit or the Black History Month event.Emhoff spokesperson Katie Peters said the school alerted the Secret Service about what she termed a “security incident or a report of a potential security incident”.“US Secret Service was made aware of a security threat at a school where the Second Gentleman was meeting with students and faculty,” Peters added in a later tweet. “Mr Emhoff is safe and the school has been evacuated. We are grateful to Secret Service and DC Police for their work.”The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Students at the school were dismissed for the day, since it was expected to take several hours for security officials to sweep the building, principal Nadine Smith said.TopicsWashington DCBlack History MonthKamala HarrisUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Seditious conspiracy is rarely proven. The Oath Keepers trial is a litmus test

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      Seditious conspiracy is rarely proven. The Oath Keepers trial is a litmus testExtensive planning and tangible action by the far-right militia group’s members provide ‘strong grounds’ for case, experts say Later this year the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and nine alleged co-conspirators will be the first to face trial on seditious conspiracy charges related to the insurrection at the US Capitol.Outrage as Newt Gingrich says Capitol attack investigators could be jailedRead moreThe charges are significant because they allege that the January 6 attack went beyond disorderly conduct and assaults on law enforcement, instead constituting an organized and violent attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power.But because sedition charges so rarely go to trial, there isn’t a great deal of precedent for how such trials proceed, experts say. And US prosecutors have a checkered history in securing sedition convictions. “It’s been used in ways that have been absurd and has been used in ways that were slam dunks,” said Joshua Braver, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin.But unlike some previous uses of seditious conspiracy, many experts say the case against the Oath Keepers is strong. “This case is different. This case is a plan that was executed and the federal government is on much stronger grounds,” Braver said. “If anything is seditious conspiracy, this is it.”The checkered history of seditious conspiracy trialsSeditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past.“Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy case came in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Islamist extremist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine co-conspirators with seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that Abdel-Rahman and his followers plotted to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building and several other landmarks around New York City.During the trial, prosecutors presented the jury with speeches of Abdel-Rahman and a recording from an FBI informant in which Abdel-Rahman discussed attacking military installations. The defense, meanwhile, argued that Abdel-Rahman’s speech was constitutionally protected and that he never directly planned attacks. After a week of deliberation, jury members convicted the group of seditious conspiracy along with numerous other charges. Abdel-Rahman died in prison in 2017.Decades before the Abdel-Rahman trial, prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building. The Puerto Rican independence activist Lolita Lebrón and three accomplices entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators. The group, along with numerous people charged as co-conspirators, were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.Other seditious conspiracy cases have fallen apart once they have gone to trial, including the most recent attempt at the charge in 2012. Prosecutors alleged that nine members of the Christian far-right Hutaree militia committed seditious conspiracy through a plot to kill a police officer and then attack their funeral in order to incite an uprising against the government. The defense successfully argued that militia members’ discussion of violent rebellion was essentially fantastical boasting, protected by the first amendment and that any specific plots were instigated by an FBI informant who had infiltrated the group. The militia members were ultimately acquitted of sedition, albeit with several pleading guilty to less severe weapons charges.A 1988 seditious conspiracy trial involving 13 white supremacists accused of plotting to overthrow the government and assassinate a federal judge provided an even more severe cautionary tale. Prosecutors in the case cut a plea deal with a white supremacist leader, Glenn Miller, who potentially faced decades in prison for other crimes, agreeing to reduce his charges in exchange for him testifying in the sedition trial. But Miller’s testimony turned out to be weak and unreliable, leading to an all-white jury acquitting all 13 white supremacists. The national chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan hugged several defendants following the verdict and touted it as a victory for white nationalism.In the years after the trial, Miller was released from prison and once again became active in the white supremacist movement despite being in the federal witness protection program. In 2014, he killed three people, including a 14-year-old boy, at a Jewish community center and retirement home in Kansas. He died in prison last May.The case against the Oath KeepersThe case against Rhodes and the Oath Keepers is more straightforward than past seditious conspiracy charges against the far right, experts say, both because there appears to be extensive evidence of planning before the Capitol attack and because numerous members took tangible actions to breach the Capitol.Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.The Oath Keepers “coordinated travel across the country to enter Washington, DC, equipped themselves with a variety of weapons, donned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer Rhodes’s call to take up arms”, the charging documents against Rhodes state.Rhodes this week pleaded not guilty to the charges and has repeatedly denied that he has done anything wrong or broken any laws. After federal agents used a warrant to seize his phone in May last year, Rhodes stated that he sat for a nearly three-hour interview with authorities and claimed he had nothing to hide. He claims that Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble. At a Texas rally in the months following the insurrection, he told a crowd that he may go to jail for “made-up crimes”.Rhodes was denied bail, in part because the federal judge overseeing his detention hearing stated that the militia leader had installed “elaborate escape tunnels” on his property and posed a flight risk.As one of the most prominent leaders in the far-right movement over the past decade, Rhodes’s trial is set to be the highest-profile case so far in the investigation and one of the most significant domestic extremism cases in years.More than 700 people are charged with crimes related to the insurrection, but the majority of those cases have involved less complex charges that don’t require proving the type of coordination and planning that seditious conspiracy indictments involve. Meanwhile, most of the more than 150 people who have so far pleaded guilty in the investigation have received relatively short sentences or no jail time at all.“They’ve gone for the low-hanging fruit first and things are going to get more interesting as the days go by,” Ross said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsWashington DCLaw (US)featuresReuse this content More