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Jury selection began Tuesday 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.
Amid complaints by attorneys for Stewart Rhodes and the others that they can’t get a fair jury in Washington, the judge began winnowing the pool of potential jurors who will decide the fate of the first Jan. 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 Jan. 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 have accused Rhodes of leading a weekslong 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 Jan. 6.
Jury selection could take several days and the trial is expected to last at least five weeks.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday denied defense attorney’s latest bid to move the trial out of Washington. The judge acknowledged that no juries have acquitted Jan. 6 defendants so far, but said that doesn’t 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 Jan. 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 Tuesday based on concerns about their impartiality. One man recalled the fear and “trauma” that he experienced on Jan. 6. Mehta also disqualified a…
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Source : france24
