All articles tagged with #sedition trial
Attorneys for the Proud Boys blamed Donald Trump for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in their seditious conspiracy trial. The defense lawyers wrapped their closing arguments early Tuesday afternoon, and the Justice Department presented its rebuttal argument as the day came to a close. Jurors will begin deliberating Wednesday.
Closing arguments in the trial of five members of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, have begun. Prosecutors argue that the group saw themselves as "Donald Trump's army" and were "thirsting for violence and organizing for action" to keep Trump in power. The Proud Boys are charged with entering a seditious conspiracy against the US government, allegedly meant to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election votes that ultimately culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. A guilty verdict could bolster the Justice Department's account that the Capitol attack served as a dire threat to American democracy.
Defense witnesses for the Proud Boys in their sedition trial have been made to appear evasive and unreliable under government cross-examination, potentially undermining their attempts to sway jurors from prosecutors’ theory of the case. The government has used a mountain of unflattering evidence to take fresh shots at the group’s leaders after two co-defendants took the risky step to testify, reinforcing the government’s contention that the men engaged in a seditious conspiracy to violently thwart the 2020 presidential election results.
Defense lawyers for the five Proud Boys on trial for sedition charges in connection with the Capitol attack have scaled back their plans for an aggressive defense after prosecutors undercut testimony from defense witnesses. None of the defendants have testified so far, and the usefulness of the witnesses called by the defense has been mixed at best. The trial is now in its 11th week, and the defense's plans for a broad defense case have been hampered by Judge Timothy J. Kelly's disallowing testimony from some witnesses and narrowing the scope of what others could say on the stand.
In a rare move, at least four FBI sources were called as witnesses for the defense in the ongoing trial of five Proud Boys leaders accused of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The role reversal highlights intelligence failures leading up to the riot, as the FBI was unprepared despite having inroads into the groups now accused of plotting the violence. Defense attorneys have said in court that they count eight or nine informants referenced during the proceedings. The trial has lasted nearly three months.
The trial of five Proud Boys accused of sedition in connection with the storming of the Capitol has revealed an unusual number of informants that the FBI had in or near the group. Defense lawyers had suggested that the bureau had as many as eight informants in the far-right organization in the months surrounding Jan. 6, 2021. The newly disclosed informant, a Texas-based activist named Jen Loh, took part in prayer meetings with some of the defendants’ relatives and had multiple contacts with the defendants themselves while they have been in jail. The defense has upended the standard pattern and rather than attacking the informants has embraced them, issuing subpoenas to more than a half-dozen to appear as witnesses at the trial.