jury brought the first convictions of seditious conspiracy in a january 6th case against two of the masterminds of the right-wing gang of oath keepers. elmer stewart rhodes iii kelly meggs woke for now the united states looks upon seditious conspiracy if two or more persons conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the united states, or levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any llavina states, or by force to seize take or possess any property of the united states contrary to the authority thereof. and while that is sort of dance legal language, in toto it is a different thing to prove beyond reasonable doubt. if convictions for seditious conspiracy are rare for that
the tv footage was of footage from january six, you d actually think it is a normal tourist visit. you wouldn t really think that if you look at the footage. now though the truth at the attempted coup the, insurrection has been attacked established definitively. because yesterday the federal jury brought the first convictions of seditious conspiracy in a january 6th case against two of the masterminds of the right-wing gang of oath keepers. elmer stewart rhodes iii kelly meggs woke for now the united states looks upon seditious conspiracy if two or more persons conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the united states, or levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder,
watched trial, it was one that even rhodes own attorney said was a fair one. the doj didn t get everything they were seeking but this is a major conviction. what is the significance of it in your view? it s significant bianna, really in the sense that seditious conspiracy is very rarely charged, the last time it was even charged with a case was 2010, the judge threw that out, before that in decades it had only been charged i think three times prior to that. one, people don t usually try to overthrow governments and that s a good thing, but number two, actually establishing that someone used force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of a law is actually quite hard to do legally and so on account of the fact that the justice department established here that they could get a conviction on the seditious conspiracy charge is very big. and then i think beyond that there s the macro almost moral point that an attack on america ended in a conviction here. so even setting aside the leg
it is today s. we had one before the holiday, and i look at the second day. they sent a note out of the jury. it wasn t enough of the prosecution, all tell you that. it wasn t a terrible note. they want to understand what prevent, hinder, or delayed, in this case seditious conspiracies. there has been an agreement, prevent, hinder delayed, the execution of any law on the united states. and they wanted to understand how that related to laws governing the transfer of presidential power. and judge made, when he was a lawyer who practiced together in the form. judge made it sent back an instruction on how the two interacted. that they could have to find a agreement to interfere with the transfer of power by force, i think there s a lot of evidence of that. i represent the d.c. ag and a civil case against these militias. i know these are not easy cases. and i appreciate the juries taking their time. come on, we tried a bunch of cases. the jury was out moment in
the oath keepers, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, sara. reporter: that s right. and basically what the jury looked at there is they looked at a couple of different things. first it was like do you find that the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt there was the existence of a conspiracy charge in count one. that conspiracy charge was seditious conspiracy, and they had to determine, one, was the goal to oppose by force the authority of the government, of the united states, and two, to use force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the united states. this is huge. the government, the jury says, has proven its case against the founder of the oath keepers, elmer stewart rhodes iii. he has argued that basically there was no plan to do so but that he believed neither joe biden nor president donald