michigan, and a few in ohio and indiana. all were members of a militia militia group that called itself the who tyrese-ing on their website that they believe in preparing for an anti christ and in getting ready for to defending themselves. among the forces of evil the group believed was anyone in the government, beginning with local police. court documents say the group talked about ways to lure police for an attack and when one plan, they would kill a policeman, then bomb the officer s funeral procession. here s the thing about that case, it failed. the seditious conspiracy charges ended up getting drop against the hutaree in large part, because a case of seditious conspiracy is extraordinarily difficult to prove, even against people whose sentiments or beliefs are clearly anti government extremists. but the department of justice has met that very, very high bar with 14 of these pro trump militia members. the federal prosecutors, able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that more t
6th insurrection. nine members of the fringe extremist group known as the oath keepers were either convicted or plead guilty to seditious conspiracy in two previous cases. it is difficult to overstate how rare these kinds of convictions are. it s really unusual for prosecutors to even bring charges of seditious conspiracy. it is even more unusual for them to successfully prosecute the cases. the government has not successfully prosecuted a case like this before january 6th since the early 1990s. and the last time the government even tried, prior to january 6th, was back in the early 2010s, when they tried a group of anti-government militia members who call themselves the hutaree. the fbi, along with local police and other federal agents swooped down in force over the weekend, arresting eight people, most of them in southern michigan, and a few in ohio and indiana. all were members of a militia militia group that called itself the hutarees, saying on their website that they believe
in preparing for an anti christ and in getting ready for to defending themselves. among the forces of evil the group believed was anyone in the government, beginning with local police. court documents say the group talked about ways to lure police for an attack and when one plan, they would kill a policeman, then bomb the officer s funeral procession. here s the thing about that case, it failed. the seditious conspiracy charges ended up getting drop against the hutaree in large part, because a case of seditious conspiracy is extraordinarily difficult to prove, even against people whose sentiments or beliefs are clearly anti government extremists. but the department of justice has met that very, very high bar with 14 of these pro trump militia members. the federal prosecutors, able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that more than a dozen people conspired to violently overthrow the government, and what they believed to be, according to testimony in multiple trials, orders from donal
of the hutaree militia. brian, let me start with you. as someone who covered this trial, and it was a complicated trial. it was a long trial. much longer than 90% of trials that have been in america. i m pulling it out of my head, but i think that s right. were you surprised by this conclusion? i don t think i was terribly surprised. i was kind of surprised about who the jury actually struggled over. i mean, honestly, in my mind, it was enrique tarrio one, which was going to be the toughest struggle for them to reach on the seditious conspiracy charge. but, you know, now that it comes out, you can very much follow the logic of what the jurors it, and that s always nice to see, when you can say okay, i see what they did with the evidence here, right? in this case, i think what they saw is that the individual, dominic pezzola, who smashed that window open without stolen police shield, he wasn t in communication with so many of the other proud boys as much as the other members of this c