Three members of the Oath Keepers (Los Guardianes del Juramento) and an associate of this far-right militia have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their role in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Sentences already in place against the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, and his lieutenant, Kelly Meggs, for their role in the attack.
The four convicted this Monday are Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo. They have been accused of trying to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the legitimate President of the United States after his November 2020 election victory on that historic January 6th. That day, a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop this process and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
Among other things, prosecutors charged Vallejo with being responsible for a gun shipment at a Virginia hotel near Washington and the Capitol across the Potomac River. This armament should be the “rapid reaction force” in the attack. For their part, Hackett, Moerschel and Minuta led groups that forcibly entered the headquarters of the US Congress.
The guilty verdict caps a five-week trial in which prosecutors accused the four defendants of resorting to a “perverse” version of history to justify their actions. The inmates now face a sentence that can bring them up to twenty years in prison.
“The attack on the Capitol was a means to an end,” prosecutor Louis Manzo said in his closing arguments to the jury last Wednesday. “January 6th was just a fight. The whole conspiracy was to stop the transfer of power,” he claimed.
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