Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.
Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs are the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty of the rarely used civil war-era charge at trial. The trial was the biggest test yet for the US justice department in its efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack that shook the foundations of US democracy.
On social media, Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned legal analyst, said the guilty verdicts represented “a huge huge victory for the US [justice department] in a challenging and deeply important, even historic, case”.
Rhodes is a Yale Law-educated former paratrooper and disbarred attorney. In an eight-week trial, he and four associates were accused of fomenting a plot to use force to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
It was the…
This article was written by Guardian staff and agencies and originally published on www.theguardian.com