Jan. 6 sedition trial underway for Oath Keepers leader
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 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 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 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 “one of the single most treasonous acts in the history of this country.”
The judge disqualified three additional jurors Tuesday based on concerns about their impartiality. One man recalled the fear and “trauma” that he experienced on Jan. 6. Mehta also disqualified a woman who said she used to work as a House staffer on Capitol Hill and still has many friends who work there.
“I was really afraid for their lives that day,” she said.
Phillip Linder, an attorney for Rhodes, urged the judge to disqualify a man who said he has a close family friend who works for a House member and recalled watching livestreamed video of the Capitol attack. The judge called it a “close call” but declined to disqualify the man who said he could set aside what he has heard about the Oath Keepers.
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 Biden's electoral victory.
Prosecutors will try to show that an Oath Keepers' plot to stop Biden from becoming president started well before that, in fact before all the votes in the 2020 race had even been counted.
Authorities say 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 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.