Extremist group Oath Keeper founders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs are convicted of sedition for their involvement in the storming of the United States Congress.
They are the first people to be sentenced for serious crimes, TT reports.
Crime of sedition
Oath Keeper's founders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs are convicted of crimes of sedition, while three co-defendants are acquitted of precisely that charge, which gives up to 20 years in prison on the penalty scale.
The five defendants are the first of the nearly 800 criminal suspects in the Congress storming on January 6 last year to be charged with serious crimes.
In the storming, aggressive supporters of former President Donald Trump overpowered the undersized congressional police and forced their way into the Capitol.
Like a general
Rhodes never entered the congressional building himself, but led his supporters "like a general" on the battlefield, according to the prosecution's side.
The verdict was the culmination of a nearly two-month-long trial, and came after three days of deliberations by the twelve people on the jury.
The three acquitted of the sedition charge are sentenced, together with the other two, for other less serious charges.
Denies crime
According to Rhodes, it was not part of the group's mission to go into the Capitol, he said on the witness stand, accusing Kelly Meggs, who led the group's Florida chapter, of being an idiot for doing it.
- I think it was stupid to enter the Capitol.
It opened the door for the political persecution of us.
And here we are now, he said during the trial.