to stop the democracy in this country. and you look at what they did, especially dominic pezzola slashing into the capitol. that led a slew of people into the capitol from a place where you weren t expecting people to come in, so you saw this huge number of people pushing in through that broken window. i mean, it is remarkable to see that happen, and it would have been surprising if he were not convicted of serious charges, after seeing it plain and in person what he did as well as some of the other members when you look at the evidence. the jury saw it, and they came back with guilty verdicts. yeah, there s just so much evidence. that s the other thing. renato, i do want to ask you and i asked this question of elie williams last hour the former president is currently being investigated by the justice department for his role in january 6th. of course he did not storm the capitol. he did not break a window there. he did not assault a police officer. the focus has been on whether
think what you saw here like you said, jim, very careful jury parsing the evidence found four defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy. i think it s a landmark, you know, achievement frankly by the justice department, a very challenging case to bring and one that undercuts a lot of the narratives about january 6th being, you know, just a bunch of hoodlums or, you know, something that was disorganized. actually, you know, there was a lot of evidence presented at this trial regarding planning and coordination, like katelyn mentioned a moment ak. the fact that the fifth defendant s not guilty of that as katelny pointed out, a number of other convictions of him including conspiracy charges regarding obstruction of an official proceeding. so a similar sentence, but actually, i think, a set of verdicts that are going to now hold up very well on appeal given the careful consideration by the jury. renato, thanks so much. stay with us for a second, i d like to go out to sara sidner who s bee
little bit ago about consequences. renato underscored that point saying this really flies in the face that this is any argument that this is just a bunch of people that got together and happened to be at the capitol that day. this is a seditious conspiracy conviction for four of these people. this latest gentleman not guilty but guilty of so many other things. help us understand what this means for this moving forward and kind of zoom out if you can, because we re kind of getting down in the weeds a little bit, for people who are just tuning in, what does this mean? reporter: all right, so i ll sort of start with the reasons why perhaps a jury did not convict pezzola, the fifth defendant who faced seditious conspiracy charges. part of the reason may be because he was not in a leadership position. en enrique tarrio was then the president, if you will, the leader of the national organization of proud boys at that time, and then the others who were convicted held some kind of higher up
seditious conspiracy charge against dominic pezzola. pezzola is a person that is very visibly part of the story of the day of january 6th. he had he s seen in many images, in video, in photos breaking a window, in this case, he was accused of ripping a riot shield away from a police officer and then taking it to bash into a window in the back side of the capitol building at a time when the crowd had sort of settled down, the police were basically getting their line regrouped, and pezzola was able to get them in leading others into the building. jim. a big day there, and katelyn, we have just gotten word that the jury is back in the courtroom, another verdict another part of this verdict is going to be read, so we are going to let you go so that you can see what is going to happen there and report back to us. i do want to bring in former federal prosecutor renato mariati to talk a little bit
appeals going forward from now. renato, i want to go to you. it s a lot for folks to digest at home. we were reporting thisd of sedi conspiracy, which is quite a serious charge, not an easy one to prove in court, you and others have made thar repeatedl. four guilty of charges, one of just place this into context here, a careful jury that a jury that came to quite a conclusion for several leaders of this group regarding their role in january 6th. that s right, jim, you know, if you asked me a couple of years ago would we see charges for seditious conspiracy against any defendant, i would have said absolutely not. i m sure i did on the air once or more than once. it s a very rarely brought statute. it s the sort of statute that s rarely charged, charges i don t think we ve really seen since after the civil war. difficult to prove, and so i