(Reuters) – Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump, who was indicted on Tuesday for his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is not the only person to face prosecution over efforts to undo his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. election.
Numerous people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to crimes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Here are five facts about some of these prosecutions.
SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY TRIALS
Ten members of far-right extremist groups have been convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy – a rarely prosecuted felony charge involving attempts “to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States” – for their roles in the Capitol attack. The charge dates back to the 1861-1865 U.S. Civil War era.
Those convicted of the charge include six members of the Oath Keepers group, including founder Stewart Rhodes, and four members of the Proud Boys group, including former leader Enrique Tarrio. Four other defendants have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, the Justice Department said in May.
MORE THAN 1,000 ARRESTS
More than 1,000 people have been arrested on charges arising from the Capitol attack, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 570 have pleaded guilty and 78 were convicted at trial.
LONGEST SENTENCE
That distinction goes to Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper turned Yale-educated lawyer, who was sentenced in May of this year to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes. Rhodes during his sentencing hearing called himself a “political prisoner” who was trying to oppose people “who are destroying our country.”
THE TRUMP DEFENSE
Multiple people charged with taking part in the Capitol riot have tried to shift at least part of the blame onto Trump, who delivered an incendiary speech to supporters shortly before the attack. Trump repeated his false claims that the election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud and urged them to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Matthew Peed, the lawyer for Oath Keepers member Edward Vallejo, was one of those who made this argument.
“The tragedy of Jan. 6 is that hundreds of lifelong law-abiding people like Edward Vallejo were lied to by the sitting president and told that the certification was an orchestrated assault on our democracy,” Peed wrote in a sentencing memo to the judge in the case.
“The people who broke the law that day were not al Qaeda members bombing the World Trade Center or even ‘traitors’ who consciously chose to attack democracy rather than accept that they validly lost. They were patriotic Americans who believed wrongly – very wrongly – that they were defending democracy against corrupt officials,” Peed added.
Vallejo was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes.
HIGH-PROFILE CASES
Aside from the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys trials, there have been other high-profile cases arising from the attack.
Jacob Chansley – nicknamed “the QAnon Shaman” after he was photographed inside the Capitol shirtless, wearing a horned headdress and heavily tattooed – in 2021 pleaded guilty to taking part in the unrest and was later sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Jared Wise, who served with the FBI from 2004 to 2017, charged in May of this year with four misdemeanor counts relating to the attack, including unlawfully entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct. According to court filings, Wise was captured on video telling police officers protecting the Capitol: “I’m former law enforcement. You’re disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo. You can’t see it. … Shame on you!”
Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who was photographed putting his feet up on a desk inside then-U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the attack, was convicted in January of this year. He was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison.
(This story has been refiled to correct the year to ‘2021’ not ‘2001’ in paragraph 2)
(Reporting by Costas Pitas; Additonal reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)
