Rhetorical questions, right?
....how much will you still believe? How gullible will you still be?
Four Oath Keepers found guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
The verdict is the the second of three seditious conspiracy cases charged in the U.S. Capitol breach
Members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, including defendants Roberto Minuta and David Moerschel, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
By Rachel Weiner
Updated January 23, 2023 at 3:33 p.m. EST|Published January 23, 2023 at 2:31 p.m. EST
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy Monday, joining founder Stewart Rhodes in being found guilty by a jury of plotting to keep President Donald Trump in power by force.
Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used and even more rarely successful, making the verdict a significant victory for the Justice Department. Of the nearly 1,000 people charged with committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, only 14 were charged with seditious conspiracy, identified by the Justice Department as not just participants in a violent mob but leaders using brutality to further a political plot. In November, the same prosecution team failed to convict three associates of the Oath Keepers of the crime.
At Rhodes’s trial only he and Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of conspiring to commit sedition, while three associates were convicted of less politically loaded felonies that did not require plans to use force. The Oath Keepers verdict — which came after the jury deliberated for about 13 hours — comes as five members of the Proud Boys face trial down the hall on seditious conspiracy charges.
Joseph Hackett, 52, ; Roberto Minuta, 38; David Moerschel, 45 and Edward Vallejo, 64, were all also convicted Monday of obstructing lawmakers and Congress generally and conspiring to do the same. Hackett was convicted of destroying evidence by deleting it from his devices, while Minuta and Moerschel were acquitted on that charge. Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of responsibility for damaging the Capitol’s historic Columbus doors.
The Oath Keepers were described by federal prosecutors as armed and dangerous traitors, and by their attorneys as hapless has-beens who stumbled into chaos.
“They claimed to wrap themselves in the Constitution, but they trampled it,” prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler said in closing arguments. “They ignored the will of the people,” he said, but “had the audacity to claim to be oath-keepers.”
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
He is accused of guiding a months-long effort to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the swearing-in of President Biden.
l
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta allowed all four men to await sentencing on 24-hour house arrest, noting that none of them had prior criminal history or issues on pretrial release.
Hackett and Moerschel traveled to D.C. from Florida with Meggs and followed him into the Capitol at 2:38 p.m. Minuta was in a separate Oath Keeper group providing security for Trump confidante Roger Stone that morning.
Stone refused to leave his hotel because the Oath Keepers could not guarantee him access to the presidential stage, according to the testimony. When the riot started, Minuta and the others left Stone and rode hotel golf carts over to the Capitol. They entered around 3:15 p.m. and were pushed out a few minutes later, as Minuta shouted at the officers, “All that’s left is the Second Amendment!”
Vallejo came with friends from Arizona; he spent the morning of Jan. 6 trying to figure out where he parked his truck the day before. Then surveillance video shows he went back to the Ballston Comfort Inn where the Oath Keepers had stashed their guns. During the riot he repeatedly offered by text to come in as a “Quick Reaction Force,” and the next morning he went back to the Capitol to “probe the defense line,” but he got no response either time.
After the riot, the Oath Keepers dined at an Olive Garden in Tysons. At first, they were eagerly planning next steps, attendee Joe Harrington testified, like “preparing for a trip to Disney World.” Then they learned that federal agents were looking for them, and it was “like when the lights come on and the cockroaches scatter.” Several members woke up the next morning to find that their leaders had hastily left D.C.
Federal prosecutors alleged more emphatically than in the previous trial that the Oath Keepers came close to committing deadly violence . Rhodes expressed regret after Jan. 6 about not having rifles that day. Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Manzo told jurors that both Minuta and Vallejo might have killed lawmakers had they not been deterred by the Capitol Police on Jan. 6 and the National Guard the day after.
Noting testimony that Florida Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson pushed Capitol Police to see if he could feel body armor, Manzo argued that “shooting officers … was on the table.” That allegation was not made before Harrelson, who was tried with Rhodes, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy in November.
“This isn’t Twitter fingers,” Manzo said, referring to defense attorneys’ claims that their clients were all talk. “These are traitors. They were ready for violence.”
Through attorneys, the defendants claimed their motives and actions, while foolish, were idiosyncratic and unplanned. They were drawn to the Oath Keepers not to overthrow the government but for protection from the antifascists, criminals and covid restrictions right-wing media led them to fear, they argued.
Rhodes then convinced them he was likely to receive orders directly from President Donald Trump to muster as a defense force under the Insurrection Act.
“Responsibility really rests at our politicians’ feet,” Moerschel’s attorney, Scott Weinberg said. “The president and Stewart Rhodes were claiming that the world is coming to an end even before the election.” He said most Oath Keepers quit after about a year, when they realized it was just Rhodes’s “piggy bank” — and that those who joined the fray on Jan. 6 were mostly “rookies.”
Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Prosecutors say that’s when the Oath Keepers decided to act on their own. One former member, 21-year-old Caleb Berry, testified that Meggs explicitly directed the group to stop the vote count.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/...n6-guilty/
....how much will you still believe? How gullible will you still be?
Four Oath Keepers found guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
The verdict is the the second of three seditious conspiracy cases charged in the U.S. Capitol breach
Members of the Oath Keepers extremist group, including defendants Roberto Minuta and David Moerschel, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
By Rachel Weiner
Updated January 23, 2023 at 3:33 p.m. EST|Published January 23, 2023 at 2:31 p.m. EST
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy Monday, joining founder Stewart Rhodes in being found guilty by a jury of plotting to keep President Donald Trump in power by force.
Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used and even more rarely successful, making the verdict a significant victory for the Justice Department. Of the nearly 1,000 people charged with committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, only 14 were charged with seditious conspiracy, identified by the Justice Department as not just participants in a violent mob but leaders using brutality to further a political plot. In November, the same prosecution team failed to convict three associates of the Oath Keepers of the crime.
At Rhodes’s trial only he and Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of conspiring to commit sedition, while three associates were convicted of less politically loaded felonies that did not require plans to use force. The Oath Keepers verdict — which came after the jury deliberated for about 13 hours — comes as five members of the Proud Boys face trial down the hall on seditious conspiracy charges.
Joseph Hackett, 52, ; Roberto Minuta, 38; David Moerschel, 45 and Edward Vallejo, 64, were all also convicted Monday of obstructing lawmakers and Congress generally and conspiring to do the same. Hackett was convicted of destroying evidence by deleting it from his devices, while Minuta and Moerschel were acquitted on that charge. Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of responsibility for damaging the Capitol’s historic Columbus doors.
The Oath Keepers were described by federal prosecutors as armed and dangerous traitors, and by their attorneys as hapless has-beens who stumbled into chaos.
“They claimed to wrap themselves in the Constitution, but they trampled it,” prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler said in closing arguments. “They ignored the will of the people,” he said, but “had the audacity to claim to be oath-keepers.”
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
He is accused of guiding a months-long effort to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the swearing-in of President Biden.
l
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta allowed all four men to await sentencing on 24-hour house arrest, noting that none of them had prior criminal history or issues on pretrial release.
Hackett and Moerschel traveled to D.C. from Florida with Meggs and followed him into the Capitol at 2:38 p.m. Minuta was in a separate Oath Keeper group providing security for Trump confidante Roger Stone that morning.
Stone refused to leave his hotel because the Oath Keepers could not guarantee him access to the presidential stage, according to the testimony. When the riot started, Minuta and the others left Stone and rode hotel golf carts over to the Capitol. They entered around 3:15 p.m. and were pushed out a few minutes later, as Minuta shouted at the officers, “All that’s left is the Second Amendment!”
Vallejo came with friends from Arizona; he spent the morning of Jan. 6 trying to figure out where he parked his truck the day before. Then surveillance video shows he went back to the Ballston Comfort Inn where the Oath Keepers had stashed their guns. During the riot he repeatedly offered by text to come in as a “Quick Reaction Force,” and the next morning he went back to the Capitol to “probe the defense line,” but he got no response either time.
After the riot, the Oath Keepers dined at an Olive Garden in Tysons. At first, they were eagerly planning next steps, attendee Joe Harrington testified, like “preparing for a trip to Disney World.” Then they learned that federal agents were looking for them, and it was “like when the lights come on and the cockroaches scatter.” Several members woke up the next morning to find that their leaders had hastily left D.C.
Federal prosecutors alleged more emphatically than in the previous trial that the Oath Keepers came close to committing deadly violence . Rhodes expressed regret after Jan. 6 about not having rifles that day. Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Manzo told jurors that both Minuta and Vallejo might have killed lawmakers had they not been deterred by the Capitol Police on Jan. 6 and the National Guard the day after.
Noting testimony that Florida Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson pushed Capitol Police to see if he could feel body armor, Manzo argued that “shooting officers … was on the table.” That allegation was not made before Harrelson, who was tried with Rhodes, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy in November.
“This isn’t Twitter fingers,” Manzo said, referring to defense attorneys’ claims that their clients were all talk. “These are traitors. They were ready for violence.”
Through attorneys, the defendants claimed their motives and actions, while foolish, were idiosyncratic and unplanned. They were drawn to the Oath Keepers not to overthrow the government but for protection from the antifascists, criminals and covid restrictions right-wing media led them to fear, they argued.
Rhodes then convinced them he was likely to receive orders directly from President Donald Trump to muster as a defense force under the Insurrection Act.
“Responsibility really rests at our politicians’ feet,” Moerschel’s attorney, Scott Weinberg said. “The president and Stewart Rhodes were claiming that the world is coming to an end even before the election.” He said most Oath Keepers quit after about a year, when they realized it was just Rhodes’s “piggy bank” — and that those who joined the fray on Jan. 6 were mostly “rookies.”
Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Prosecutors say that’s when the Oath Keepers decided to act on their own. One former member, 21-year-old Caleb Berry, testified that Meggs explicitly directed the group to stop the vote count.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/...n6-guilty/
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