WASHINGTON (AP) — The former national chairman of the Proud Boys is on trial on the most serious charge ever brought in connection with the attack on the US Capitol. This is a mutinous conspiracy, the same crime for which the two leaders of the Oathkeepers were convicted a few weeks ago.
This is the third such lawsuit in the mass prosecution of the January 6, 2021 riots that forced Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from riotous crowds. Opening statements began on Thursday and the trial is expected to last at least six weeks.
Prosecutors in the case against former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants will seek to prove that the extremist group planned for weeks to use force to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. Tarrio was not in Washington on January 6 – he had been arrested in another case two days earlier – but authorities say he helped start the violence and welcomed from afar the riots that were unfolding.
“On January 6, they targeted the very heart of our democracy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough told jurors on Thursday.
Defense lawyers say there was no plot to storm the Capitol or block Congress from confirming President Joe Biden’s victory. The defense will try to prove that the actions of the Proud Boys, who joined Trump supporters, were spontaneous, and not the culmination of a pre-planned conspiracy.
Tarrio of Miami stands trial alongside Ethan Nordian of Auburn, Washington, who was president of the Proud Boys chapter; Joseph Biggs of Ormond Beach, Florida, self-proclaimed Proud Boys organizer; Zachary Rehl, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Proud Boys, and Dominic Pezzola, member of the Proud Boys from Rochester, New York. Prosecutors say Pezzola allowed the first rioters to enter the Capitol by smashing a window with a police shield.
Here is a look at the rebel conspiracy charge and its history:
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WHAT IS A SMOOTH CONSPIRACY?
The Insurrectionary Conspiracy Act was passed after the Civil War to arrest Southerners who might continue to fight the US government. Cases of rebellion have been rare in recent history. The charge can be difficult to prove, especially in cases where the alleged conspiracy has failed.
To win a mutiny conspiracy case, prosecutors must prove that two or more individuals conspired to “overthrow, suppress, or destroy by force” the U.S. government or start a war against it, or that they conspired to use force to oppose government authority or block execution. law.
Tarrio and his co-defendants are accused of conspiring to block a transfer of power from Trump to Biden. The indictment alleges that they conspired to violently oppose the authority of the federal government and use force to prevent the implementation of laws relating to the transfer of power.
It is not enough to simply show that the defendants advocated the use of force – prosecutors must show that they conspired to use force. The sentence provides for up to 20 years in prison.
WHO FACED SUCH ACCUSATION IN JANUARY. 6 ATTACK?
In November, the Justice Department returned a guilty verdict in connection with a mutinous conspiracy against Oathkeeper leader Stuart Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs after a two-month trial in the same federal court in Washington.
Three other associates of the Oathkeepers were acquitted of the charges, but were convicted of other felony offenses that carry significant prison terms. A second trial of four other oath-keepers accused of sedition began in December.
Three other oath holders pleaded guilty to sedition and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the hope of a commuted sentence.
Jeremy Joseph Bertino, a former leader of the North Carolina Proud Boys, was the first member of the extremist group to plead guilty to sedition in October. Bertino could stand as a witness against Tarrio and others.
The wrongdoing filing, filed in court, says that Bertino understood that the purpose of the Proud Boys’ trip to Washington was to stop Biden’s certification, and that the group was prepared to use force and violence.
WHAT ABOUT PAST CASES?
The convictions of Oathkeepers Rhodes and Meggs were the first convictions for a subversive conspiracy in decades.
Before this trial, the Justice Department last heard such a case in 2010 in connection with an alleged conspiracy by members of the Hutari militia in Michigan to incite rebellion against the government.
A judge ruled to drop the not guilty verdict on a sedition charge in a 2012 trial, saying prosecutors relied too much on hate speech protected by the First Amendment and failed, as required, to prove that the defendants ever had detailed plans for rebellion .
Lawyer William Swar, who represented Hutari militia leader David Stone, said prosecutors in the case failed to show that the group members were “not just talking” and “actively planning to oppose the government.”
The judge said that “Stone’s diatribes reveal nothing more than his own hatred of law enforcement—perhaps even a desire to fight or kill; it’s not the same as a mutinous conspiracy.”
Prior to the Oathkeepers case, the last successful insurgent conspiracy trial was in 1995, when Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were convicted of plotting to blow up a United Nations building, an FBI building and two tunnels and a bridge. connecting New York and New Jersey.
Abdel-Rahman, known as the “Blind Sheik”, argued on appeal that he was never involved in planning actual attacks and his hostile rhetoric was protected by free speech. He died in federal prison in 2017.
Prosecutors also won a conviction for a mutinous conspiracy in another, now almost forgotten, assault on the Capitol building in 1954. Four Puerto Rican pro-independence activists burst into the building and opened fire on the floor of the House of Representatives, injuring several representatives.
More recently, Oscar López Rivera, the former leader of the Puerto Rican independence movement that orchestrated the bombing campaign that killed or maimed dozens of people in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Puerto Rico in the 1970s and early 1980s, led 35 years in prison for sedition before President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2017.
In 1988, a jury in Fort Smith, Arkansas, acquitted white supremacists charged with sedition. The defendants were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the federal government and create an all-white nation in the Pacific Northwest, and conspiracy to kill a federal judge and an FBI agent.
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Reacher reported from Boston.
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