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Wrapping up a nearly two-month trial charging the leader of an extremist group and four associates with a seditious conspiracy against the United States, a federal prosecutor cast the case as existential.
“Our democracy is fragile,” Kathryn Rakoczy said. “It cannot exist without the rule of law, and it cannot survive if people who are dissatisfied with the result of an election can use force and violence to change the outcome. That is what these defendants attempted to do.”
Her closing argument capped the highest-profile prosecution to arise from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and others have testified that rhetoric of revolution and rebellion around Jan. 6, 2021, was just fantasy. Rakoczy asked jurors not to accept that.
“Please do not become numb to these statements,” she said. “This wasn’t ranting and raving; this was deadly serious.”
The trial of Rhodes — a former Army paratrooper and…
This article was written by Spencer S. Hsu and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com