Four Oath Keepers guilty of sedition in Capitol riot trial
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group were found guilty on Monday of sedition for taking part in the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
A jury convicted Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo of conspiring against the US government when they sought to block Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.
In a separate Washington courtroom on Monday, meanwhile, Robert Barnett, the man famously photographed on Jan 6 with his feet on a desk in House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, was convicted of disrupting Congress and other crimes.
Barnett, 62, was not accused of conspiring against the government.
He became one of the faces of the Jan 6 attack for the pictures of him leaning back in a chair and propping his boots on the desk in the office of Democrat Pelosi, the most powerful politician in Congress at the time. He faces in total up to 47 years in prison.
The convictions brought to around 530 the number of people who have been found guilty or pleaded guilty for taking part in what prosecutors have called an insurrection to keep Mr Trump in the White House after his election loss.
More than 950 people have been arrested for taking part, most on lesser charges of illegally entering the Capitol or causing property damage.
But more than 280 have been charged with assaulting law enforcement officers and 50 with serious conspiracy crimes.
Monday’s verdicts came two months after the conviction of two Jan 6 Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy. It is extremely rare for prosecutors to press this charge, and conviction can bring up to 20 years in prison.
The verdicts appeared to increase the chance for a similar ruling in the ongoing trial of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, for their roles in the attacks.
The success of federal prosecutors in obtaining convictions for sedition among the Jan 6 rioters could raise the stakes for Mr Trump and his advisers in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether they plotted or fomented the Capitol attack.