Jury selection has begun in the trial of the founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates charged with seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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Amid complaints by lawyers for Stewart Rhodes and the others that they cannot get a fair jury in Washington, the judge began winnowing the pool of potential jurors who will decide the fate of the first January 6 defendants to stand trial on the rare Civil War-era charge.
The case against Rhodes and his Oath Keeper associates is the biggest test yet for the Justice Department in its massive January 6 prosecution and is being heard in federal court not far from the Capitol.
Seditious conspiracy can be difficult to prove, and the last guilty trial verdict was nearly 30 years ago.
Prosecutors accuse Rhodes of leading a weeks-long plot to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden that culminated with Oath Keepers dressed in battle gear storming the Capitol on January 6.
Jury selection could take several days and the trial is expected to last at least five weeks.
US District Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday denied defence lawyers' latest bid to move the trial out of Washington. The judge acknowledged that no juries had acquitted January 6 defendants so far but said that did not tell him about "bias or inherent bias of jurors in the District of Columbia".
The court already had dismissed more than two dozen potential jurors before Tuesday, including a journalist who had covered the events of January 6, and someone else who described that day "one of the single most treasonous acts in the history of this country".
The judge disqualified several other people on Tuesday based on concerns about their impartiality. One man recalled the fear and "trauma" that he experienced on January 6.
Hundreds of people have already been convicted of joining the mob that overran police barriers, beat officers and smashed windows, sending lawmakers fleeing and halting the certification of Biden's electoral victory.
In a different court on Tuesday, a judge handed down one of the longest sentences so far in the riot. Kyle Young of Redfield, Iowa, was ordered to serve seven years in prison after he admitted assaulting then-Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone.
Australian Associated Press
