In the latest victory for the US Justice Department in the struggle to prosecute people who tried to block certification of the 2020 presidential election, four members of the far-right Oath Keepers were found guilty on Monday of seditious conspiracy.
In an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the convicted Oath Keepers members and other supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in 2021.
David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta, and Edward Vallejo are convicted about two months after Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder, was convicted of the same crime.
During Rhodes’s trial, three other Oath Keepers were convicted of obstructing Congress from certifying an election, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison but were found not guilty of seditious conspiracy.
The gravest charge to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack which also carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, seditious conspiracy is a law prohibiting people from attempting to overthrow the United States government.
The jury found that they attempted to derail the transfer of power from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021, joining a conspiracy with other Oath Keepers to forcibly prevent the newly elected president from taking office.
The DOJ aims to prosecute all those involved in the January 6 insurrection and, since the attack, more than 950 people have been charged, including Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who was photographed during the 2021 attack propping his feet on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
Barnett was convicted by a separate jury earlier on Monday of illegally entering the Capitol, disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon, and obstructing Congress’s certification of the election.
Since last year, the government has secured 10 convictions for seditious conspiracy, including a member of the far-right Proud Boys who pleaded guilty to the charge while the group’s national chair Enrique Tarrio and four other Proud Boys leaders are currently on trial on seditious conspiracy charges.
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