With Thursday’s criminal convictions of five Proud Boys, including leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a third jury has stamped history’s judgment on January 6 as an organized, violent uprising meant to overturn the 2020 election. In courtrooms, it’s now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Capitol siege was not spontaneous, but rather a planned assault by force on our democracy. Four defendants — Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Tarrio — were found guilty of the top charge of seditious conspiracy. (The jury reached a partial verdict in the case, meaning it will continue deliberations on some remaining counts.)
Even a single set of guilty verdicts for seditious conspiracy is rare.
In less than half a year, juries have rendered three sets of guilty verdicts for seditious conspiracy. The crime means that two or more people agreed “to try to overthrow… or to destroy by force the Government of the United States … or [its] authority … or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of [its] law.” Conviction carries a maximum 20-year term of imprisonment.
Even a single set of guilty verdicts for seditious conspiracy is rare. Targets have included Puerto Rican nationalists and al Qaeda sympathizers. The current convictions, along with those in November and January of members of the extremist Oath Keepers, were for domestic terrorism. As a headline in The Washington Post last year bluntly put it, “Right wing white men aren’t usually convicted of seditious conspiracy.”
Now, juries have affirmed that on Jan. 6, 2021, two groups of such militants planned and drove the violence. Force is the central element of an insurrection, notwithstanding the attempt by Republican legislators in Tennessee and Montana to turn the term’s meaning on its head by calling Democratic members’ nonviolent protests “insurrections.”
Today’s verdicts, which include convictions for multiple other serious crimes, are sure to bolster federal…
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