Extremist leader’s trial underway
WASHINGTON — Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of the founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates charged with seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Amid complaints by attorneys for Stewart Rhodes and the others that they can’t get a fair jury in Washington, the judge began winnowing the pool of potential jurors who will decide the fate of the first Jan. 6 defendants to stand trial on the rare, Civil War-era charge.
The case against Mr. Rhodes and his Oath Keeper associates is the biggest test yet for the Justice Department in its massive Jan. 6 prosecution and is being heard in federal court not far from the Capitol. Seditious conspiracy can be difficult to prove, and the last guilty trial verdict was nearly 30 years ago.
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Rhodes of leading a weekslong plot to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden that culminated with Oath Keepers dressed in battle gear storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Jury selection could take several days, and the trial is expected to last at least five weeks.
U. S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday denied the defense attorney’s latest bid to move the trial out of Washington. The judge acknowledged that no juries have acquitted Jan. 6 defendants so far, but said that doesn’t tell him about “bias or inherent bias of jurors in the District of Columbia.”
The court already had dismissed more than two dozen potential jurors before Tuesday, including a journalist who had covered the events of Jan. 6. and someone else who described that day as “one of the single most treasonous acts in the history of this country.”
Hundreds of people have already been convicted of joining the mob that overran police barriers, beat officers and smashed windows, sending lawmakers fleeing and halting the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.
Prosecutors will try to show that an Oath Keepers’ plot to stop Mr. Biden from becoming president started well before that, in fact before all the votes in the 2020 race had even been counted.
Authorities say Mr. Rhodes, a former U.S. Army paratrooper and a Yale Law School graduate, spent weeks mobilizing his followers to prepare to take up arms to defend Mr. Trump. The Oath Keepers repeatedly wrote in chats about the prospect of violence, stockpiled guns and put “quick reaction force” teams on standby outside Washington to get weapons into the city quickly if needed, authorities say.
Conviction for seditious conspiracy calls for up to 20 years behind bars. The last time prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction at trial was in 1995 in the case against Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks.
Nearly 900 people have been charged so far in the Jan. 6 riot and more than 400 have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial.