“Guilty. Four members of the far-right group Proud Boys, involved in the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, were convicted on Thursday of “sedition”, according to several US media, an extremely rare charge punishable by 20 years of imprisonment. Their former leader, Enrique Tarrio, is among the four condemned. They will know their sentence at a later date.
They were five members of the group to be tried by a court in Washington for having, with a crowd of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump, sown chaos in the seat of Congress, when elected officials certified the election of his Democratic rival. Joe Biden at the White House.
The jury failed to agree on the “sedition” charge for the fifth defendant, but the five were also found guilty of obstructing the work of Congress and destroying public property, among others.
Meeting in an underground car park the day before
Since the attack on January 6, 2021, more than 950 supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump have been arrested and charged with sowing chaos in the seat of American democracy.
At the end of two other trials, concluded in November and January, six members of another far-right militia, the “Oath Keepers”, had already been convicted of sedition, a leader liable to 20 years in prison which involves for planning the use of force to oppose the government. Difficult to prove, it is very rarely used, and the previous condemnation as such, before those of November and January, dates back almost a quarter of a century.
The trial of the five members of the Proud Boys opened in December in a court in the federal capital. Former Proud Boys ‘national president’ Enrique Tarrio, arrested in Miami in March 2022, was not in Washington on January 6 but was suspected of leading the attack on the Temple of American Democracy by members of this neofascist organization.
The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, was among the members of this group to be convicted in November of “sedition”. According to Enrique Tarrio’s indictment, he spoke with Stewart Rhodes on January 5 in an underground parking lot in Washington and stayed in contact with members of the Proud Boys who entered the Capitol. Four of his associates were accused of having directly taken part in the assault.
In a video of the event, one of them, Dominic Pezzola, can be seen handling a riot shield – stolen from police – and smashing a window in the Capitol. He was also convicted of stealing state property.
Special prosecutor’s investigation into Trump
On a cold winter’s day on January 6, 2021, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters gathered in Washington to protest the 2020 election result that saw the ex-real estate mogul lose .
A crowd had stormed the headquarters of the US Congress, sending shock waves around the world. At least five people died on the fringes of the attack, some of them from natural causes, and 140 police officers were injured.
Nearly two years after the event, a House of Commons inquiry into the assault had recommended criminal charges be brought against ex-President Donald Trump, including for calling for insurrection and conspiracy against the American state. Non-binding, the decision was nonetheless historic, since it aimed at a former head of state. Donald Trump immediately denounced a maneuver aimed, according to him, at hindering his new candidacy for the presidency.
But federal prosecutors securing sedition convictions in the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys trials risks raising the stakes for the former US president amid the specter of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation, which is looking into especially on the role of Donald Trump in the attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election of 2020.