Three Oath Keeper defendants have already pleaded guilty to the charge. “It does have this term ‘seditious conspiracy,’ and so that sort of brings to mind this broader issue of sedition: that you have somehow sort of betrayed the government in in some way,” said Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California at Davis and an expert in treason law. Securing a jury conviction of the seditious conspiracy charge could help justify how the Justice Department has conducted its January 6 investigation and rebut claims that the riot was merely a protest that got out of hand. Misdemeanors for unlawfully parading in the Capitol and disorderly conduct have also been used as low-hanging fruit against January 6 defendants, and those who acted violently during the breach have faced assault charges and the like as well. The bread and butter of the Capitol mob prosecutions so far has been an obstruction statute, commonly used for witness tampering, that has been used to accuse the rioters of interfering with an official proceeding. It has a shock value,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore. “I don’t believe that it was done without a lot of thought put into it. There, five alleged members of the Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes, will face a jury considering whether to convict them of the charge and of other alleged crimes.
WEATHER SANTA CRUZ JANUARY TRIAL
That symbolic significance will be lingering over the trial happening in the DC federal courthouse - beginning with opening statements Monday - in the coming weeks. The charge was added in a superseding indictment unveiled in January.
“To charge someone with seditious conspiracy is to send a signal that not only have they done a bunch of bad stuff,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a former official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, “but that they’ve done bad stuff that rises to the level where we as the government want to express that this is an attack on the basic functioning of a democratic system and is even more dangerous for that reason.”Īttorney General Merrick Garland balked at initial efforts to add the charge to Oath Keepers case, CNN previously reported, but as the case developed, investigators were able to build out the evidence with cooperators and internal communications.
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