Three more members of the far-right armed group Oath Keepers and a fourth individual were convicted Monday by a jury of felony seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo have been convicted of conspiring to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election and to materialize their plans in the attack on the seat of the U.S. Legislature.
These convictions are a victory for the Department of Justice, which brought this very rare charge against the now-convicted men, and come on top of recent convictions for the same offense against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and the group’s Florida leader Kelly Meggs.
Minuta, a New Jersey native, was one of Rhodes’ «right-hand men,» according to the indictment, while Hackett acted as a recruiting hook for new members of the group in Florida.
Moerschel was part of the «battering ram» that stormed the Capitol at the front of the crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump and Vallejo was one of the leaders of the armed «reaction force» that called for a «guerrilla war» on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, CNN reports.
Jury deliberations began last week following a closing argument by the prosecution that urged jurors to ignore the defense argument that they were simply Rhodes supporters.
Earlier Monday, it emerged that Richard Barnett, a 62-year-old Arkansas man known for the photograph in which he could be seen with his feet up on Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office desk during the Capitol assault, has been found guilty of eight felonies by a jury.
The offenses include entering a restricted area, remaining in the area with a deadly or dangerous weapon and obstructing an official proceeding. The sentence will not be known until May and in the meantime he will remain under house arrest with a GPS anklet. He could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
