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In the two years following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, several hundred rioters have faced criminal charges of varying degrees of severity. Many have been convicted of felonies and begun their prison sentences.
But seditious conspiracy trials are qualitatively different kinds of cases — and when there are convictions in such cases, they matter. NBC News reported this morning:
Four members of the far-right Proud Boys organization were found guilty Thursday of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl each faced nine counts. All but Pezzola were found guilty on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. Tarrio, Biggs, Nordean and Rehl were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
It’s worth emphasizing for context that the proceedings are not yet fully complete: Jurors are apparently still split on the seditious conspiracy charge against Pezzola — the judge in the case has asked them to keep deliberating — though the defendant has been found guilty of other crimes related to Jan. 6.
Part of what makes these developments striking is how unusual they are. Sedition charges are rarely brought — in part because they’re hard to prove, and in part because Americans rarely try to overthrow their own government. With this in mind, by most measures, the sedition trials in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack are the most notable since the aftermath of World War II.
It means today’s convictions are important, not just as a matter of accountability, but also in their historical weight.
As the political world takes stock of the jury’s findings, let’s also not forget that in the not-too-distant past, some on the right saw the lack of sedition charges as proof that the Jan. 6 violence was not an actual insurrection. Fox News’ Brit Hume, for example, argued via Twitter early last year, “Here’s a thought. Let’s base our view on whether 1/6 was an ‘insurrection’ on whether those arrested are charged with insurrection. So far, none has been.”
As a Washington Post analysis explained, Hume had plenty of company. A year ago, then-Fox host Tucker Carlson added, “Oh, it was an ‘insurrection.’ So how many of the participants in that insurrection had been charged with insurrecting? With sedition? With treason? Zero.” Fox’s Mark Levin also told the network’s audience, “Has anybody been charged with sedition? Nobody. Has anybody been charged with treason? Nobody. So why do they keep calling it an insurrection?”
And it wasn’t just Fox: Jon Chait found all kinds of voices on the right making the same pitch, seemingly confident that there’d be no seditious conspiracy convictions.
That, of course, was before members of the Oath Keepers group and members of the Proud Boys were found guilty.
By this reasoning, I suppose there should be widely held assumptions, across the left, right, and center, that the convictions necessarily offer proof that Jan. 6 was an insurrection?
As for a certain former president who lit the match that burned on Jan. 6, none of these developments do him any favors.
Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, wrote for MSNBC this morning, “The convictions add to the former president’s legal woes. Recall the first presidential debate in 2020, when [Donald] Trump famously told the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by.’ The effect of that callout to the militants became visible to the nation on Jan. 6, and again to the jury here. At trial, the government introduced a message from one Proud Boy who wrote right after the debate that ‘Donald has given us a command.’ Prosecutors also introduced the group’s messages suggesting that some coordination with the White House may have occurred before Jan. 6.”
Trump is currently facing a federal criminal investigation related to his role in the Capitol attack. It’s a safe bet that the Republican’s defense attorneys were watching the Proud Boys’ trial with great interest.