Leading figures in the Oath Keepers, a rightwing paramilitary group (details here), are getting the longest Capitol riot sentences so far.
It seems pretty clear federal courts consider the group revolutionaries. But their sentences for Jan. 6 crimes also reflect judges’ reaction to advance planning, involvement of weapons, and multiple judges have said they’re an ongoing threat to America’s democracy.
Stewart Rhodes — the militia’s founder and leader, convicted of sedition, got 18 years in prison for “for leading a far-reaching plot” to overthrow the 2020 election (see story here). Rhodes is an especially virulent figure; a brilliant guy who graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Arizona Supreme Court, and was a staffer for former congressman Ron Paul, he was disbarred for professional misconduct (read details here) and became politically radicalized.
Kelly Meggs — leader of the Florida chapter, convicted of sedition, got 12 years in prison for recruiting and organizing members to go to Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, and urging them to bring “mace and gas masks, and some batons” (see story here). He was a team leader at the riot. Before Jan. 6, he was the general manager of a car dealership in Lake City, Florida, a small town near the Georgia state line (see details here).
Jessica Watkins — acquitted of sedition, but convicted on other charges, got 8½ years. The sentencing judge described her as “more than a foot soldier,” but not as culpable as Rhodes or Meggs. NBC News described her as a trans person (see story here). Prior to the riot, Watkins owned a bar in Woodstock, Ohio, a village in a rural Republican stronghold county (see details here).
Investigators and prosecutors have been careful to draw a distinction between those who were merely in the crowd demonstrating, and those who invaded the Capitol or assaulted police. Of the 15,000 or so people in the crowd that assembled at the Capitol immediately after Trump’s “fight like hell” speech, about 1,000 have been arrested and charged with crimes.
Authorities have especially focused on two militia groups, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, whose leaders also were convicted of sedition and are awaiting sentencing. Members of these groups came to the Capitol equipped with tactical gear, and used organized tactics like the “stack formation” to break through police lines. Unlike most of the individual rioters, they had a specific plan to take over the building and interfere with Congress.
Despite all the Republican ranting about a “stolen election,” in a universe where facts count and evidence matters, Joe Biden won the presidency in a clean election. Dozens of lawsuits pursued by Trump and the GOP camp were dismissed for lack of evidence by Republican and Democrat judges alike, including judges appointed by Trump. Recounts confirmed the results, and investigations only turned up scattered individual acts of voting fraud, which happen in all major elections. Nearly all of these were committed by Trump supporters.
Trump, who told over 32,000 lies while in office according to media tracking, continued to foment baseless claims of a “stolen” election and nonexistent voting fraud after leaving office, and millions of his gullible followers believed these lies. The human psychology behind this is complex; most of these people aren’t stupid, uneducated, or ignorant. They’re people who take pains to sort fact from fiction in other aspects of their daily lives. They’re not gullible in business dealings or other matters. Politics is different; a big part of what’s going on is non-acceptance rather than disbelief.
There were discussions in the Trump White House about using the military to seize voting machines, and Trump adviser Michael Flynn advocated a military coup. Trump hesitated after staff advisers objected to those schemes. On Jan. 6, he wanted to go to the Capitol after his “fight like hell” speech, and was incensed when the Secret Service drove him back to the White House instead. Meanwhile, at the Capitol, Secret Service agents friendly to Trump tried to get Pence to leave, which would have prevented him from completing the certification of electoral votes, but he saw through it and refused to leave.
In the aftermath, polls showed roughly three-fourths of Republican voters believed Trump won the election, but it was stolen by widespread voting fraud, despite lack of any evidence. This is highly problematic. Democracy depends on responsible voters, and right now only a bare majority of voters fit that description. At a basic level, the GOP’s problem is not Trump but its voters. If Republican voters thought and behaved rationally, the election deniers and conspiracy theory promoters would be powerless.
The legal system can’t solve that problem, but it can solve part of the problem by holding accountable those who committed criminal acts to overthrow our democratically elected government, and creating a deterrent against the most extreme behavior involving political violence in the future.
Rhodes, Meggs, and Watkins won’t be organizing a physical assault against Congress when it’s time to certify the 2024 election if they’re rotting in prison. That’s good for all of us, necessary for preserving democracy, and they deserve to rot in prison for what they tried to do to the 81 million Americans who elected Biden.
Are these sentences too harsh? All I can say is, if they’d done this to a medieval king they would’ve been dismembered or impaled, and if they’d done it in Tsarist Russia they would’ve been hanged like Lenin’s brother was. In Hitler Germany or Soviet Russia, they would’ve been shot. Authoritarian regimes of the sort they attempted to establish in 21st century America usually kill people who did what they did.
We are not, of course, those societies and we have different standards of crime and punishment. Clearly, taking them out of circulation for several years is beneficial in terms disrupting these seditious organizations. And, as I said, they deserve it.
The last major attack on the U.S. Capitol was on March 1, 1954, when 4 Puerto Rican nationalists fired on the House of Representatives from the visitors’ gallery, wounding 5 congressmen, 1 seriously. They received 75 and 50 year sentences, plus 6 years for conspiracy, and served about 25 years before being released (read details here).
So, no, I don’t think these punishments are too harsh, when compared with the 1954 incident, given that this attack also resulted in deaths. Like the Puerto Rican terrorists, these defendants probably won’t serve all of that time behind bars anyway; most federal prisoners get parole. But the conditions of parole undoubtedly will preclude them from plotting and trying to carry out another overthrow of our government, and the main thing is getting these people out of the violent revolution business.