WASHINGTON (AP) — A trial beginning this week in Washington, D.C., is the most important take a look at but within the Justice Department’s efforts to carry accountable these liable for the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a violent assault that challenged the foundations of American democracy.
On trial is extremist chief Stewart Rhodes, founding father of the Oath Keepers extremist group, and 4 associates. Prosecutors and protection attorneys will make their opening statements on Monday and the trial will final a number of weeks. Here is a take a look at what’s to return:
WHO ARE THE OATH KEEPERS?
The antigovernment group was based in 2009 by Rhodes who was educated at Yale Law School and served briefly as a U.S. Army paratrooper earlier than a coaching accident left him with a again harm.
The group was named after its acknowledged purpose of getting previous and current members of the navy, first responders and cops to honor the promise they made to defend the Constitution towards enemies. They issued a listing of orders that its members wouldn’t obey, reminiscent of disarming residents, finishing up warrantless searches and detaining Americans as enemy combatants in violation of their proper to jury trials.
That comparatively benign framing and leveraging of social media helped the group develop to one of many largest antigovernment militia teams in U.S. historical past, however the inner dialog was typically darker, consultants stated. Oath Keepers participated within the standoff with federal off with officers at Nevada’s Bundy Ranch in 2014, and later alongside rooftops in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury declined to cost a police officer within the deadly taking pictures of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The group would ultimately embrace then-candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
WHY ARE THEY ON TRIAL?
On trial with Rhodes are Kelly Meggs, chief of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers; Kenneth Harrelson, one other Florida Oath Keeper; Thomas Caldwell, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer from Virginia; and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group.
They have been charged with seditious conspiracy in one of the excessive profile circumstances to return out of the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors say they spent a number of weeks amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary coaching and readying armed groups outdoors Washington to cease Joe Biden from changing into president. The plot got here to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, when Oath Keepers sporting helmets and different battle gear had been captured on digital camera shouldering their method by way of the gang of offended Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation.
Prosecutors will say that the revolt, for the Oath Keepers, was not a spur-of-the-moment protest however a part of a critical, weekslong plot to cease the switch of energy.
The Oath Keepers, for his or her half, say prosecutors have twisted their phrases and demand there was by no means any plan to assault the Capitol. They say they had been in Washington to offer safety and preparations, coaching, gear and weapons had been to guard themselves towards potential violence from left-wing antifa activists or to be prepared if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to name up a militia.
WHAT IS SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY?
The seditious conspiracy legislation was enacted after the Civil War to arrest Southerners who may maintain preventing the U.S. authorities. The cost has hardly ever been introduced in latest historical past — with blended outcomes.
In this case, prosecutors will attempt to show that Rhodes and his associates conspired to forcibly oppose the authority of the federal authorities and forcibly block the execution of legal guidelines governing the switch of presidential energy.
It may be robust to show as a result of prosecutors have to point out the defendants did greater than speak about utilizing pressure, that they conspired to truly use it.
The final seditious conspiracy circumstances had been filed in 2010, and people led to acquittal. The final profitable seditious conspiracy trial was in 1995, when Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and 9 followers had been convicted in a plot to explode a number of landmarks in New York and New Jersey.
It’s punishable by as much as 20 years behind bars.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”