A day after a federal jury convicted two far-right extremists of leading a plot to unleash political violence to prevent Joe Biden’s inauguration, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed his Justice Department would continue to “work tirelessly” to hold accountable those responsible for efforts to nullify the 2020 elections.
Throughout the trial, prosecutors highlighted the defendants’ ties to key allies of President Donald Trump, including Roger Stone, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.
But Garland declined to say Wednesday whether he expected prosecutors to eventually file charges against them or anyone else who was not physically involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I don’t want to speculate about other investigations or parts of other investigations,” Garland told reporters at a briefing where he also touted the Justice Department’s efforts to establish federal oversight of the water supply system in Jackson, Miss. .
Garland called the extensive investigation into Jan. 6 and the Jackson water crisis “important matters of public concern.”
“I am extremely proud of the lawyers, investigators and staff whose unwavering commitment to the rule of law and tireless work resulted in these two important victories yesterday,” he said.
The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump
Tuesday’s rulings upheld a key Justice Department argument laid out in the seven-week trial: that the Capitol breach was not an isolated event, but rather a culmination or component of a larger plot by extremists who wanted to stop the transfer of power. from Trump to Biden. In that case, the jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a senior deputy, Kelly Meggs, at least partially responsible for staging firearms and preparing to resist by force to the federal authority. Both were convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” a rarely used charge that is among the most serious charged so far in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.
Justice Department officials had been looking at the Oath Keepers verdict to help decide whether to bring criminal charges against other high-profile pro-Trump figures who had roles in the build-up to the violence, according to people with knowledge of the investigation. .
The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said prosecutors will also take into account the outcome of an upcoming trial involving members of another extremist group, the Proud Boys, scheduled to begin in mid-December.
At the briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Garland also said he has asked the January 6 House committee, which has been separately investigating the attack, for all interview transcripts and evidence he has collected. It has long been a point of tension between the Justice Department and Congress, with the committee still not releasing all the materials.
“We would like all transcripts and all other evidence collected by the committee so we can use it in the normal course of our investigation,” Garland said.
After Trump announced in mid-November that he would run for president in 2024, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee investigations related to Trump and his advisers after he lost the 2020 election, as well as a separate investigation of the Trump’s possession of classified documents after he left the White House.
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Defined in law as an effort by two or more persons to “conspire to overthrow, overthrow, or destroy by force the government of the United States” or to oppose by force its authority or laws, seditious conspiracy is rarely accuse Prosecutors often find it difficult to prove at trial, especially when other, simpler crimes can be charged for the same conduct.
Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal think tank and law firm that had followed the Rhodes trial closely, said the guilty verdict is significant.
“It’s not just a delivery of justice for Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, it’s a sign that a jury was able to understand what happened that day as a seditious conspiracy,” Fernandes said. “At least it opens up a universe that says it’s at least possible to secure such a conviction in acts leading up to January 6.”
But legal experts also cautioned that the verdict was not a slam dunk for the government, highlighting how difficult seditious conspiracy cases are. Three other Oath Keeper associates who were on trial were acquitted of sedition charges. The five defendants were found guilty of obstructing Congress when members met on January 6 to confirm the results of the 2020 election, a key step in the country’s peaceful transfer of power.
In deciding the charge of seditious conspiracy, juries appeared to focus on writings or recordings evidence of conspiratorial intent, a warning sign for prosecutors that the threshold for convicting people of this rare charge is high.
Rhodes’ attorney, James Lee Bright, said he hopes the Justice Department will nevertheless take the mixed verdict as a signal to move “full steam ahead” with prosecutions of others allegedly involved in planning what happened on January 6
Federal prosecutors in Rhodes’ trial made it clear that Stone, a Trump political adviser who has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in illegal acts at the Capitol on Jan. 6, was a focus of the investigation, and presented evidence as they said the government obtained from his phone in December 2021.
Who are the Oathkeepers? What you need to know.
On the day television networks declared Biden had won the election, according to prosecutors, Rhodes shared a text with Stone, Alexander and Proud Boys frontman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and others asking, “What is the plan?”
They also alleged that Rhodes shared a plan with the same “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group that included points of an anti-government uprising in Serbia that included storming its parliament.
Rhodes also wrote public letters to Trump, urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military and private militia to ensure he stayed in power.
But lawyers for people who worked for Trump and other Oath Keepers expressed skepticism that Trump received or acted on those messages.
“Out of the 10 terabytes of evidence that we have had at our disposal in this trial, I can tell you that there is nothing in the body of evidence that has been given or shown to us that is in any way indicative of the ability to indict former President Trump by January 6,” Bright, one of Rhodes’ lawyers, told reporters after Tuesday’s verdict.
On Wednesday, Garland said the work of Justice Department lawyers to secure the guilty verdicts “makes it clear that the department will work tirelessly to hold accountable those responsible for crimes related to the attacks on our democracy in January 2021.”
Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
Commission hearings on January 6
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