On Jan. 6, 2021, as scores of Proud Boys were getting ready to take their place in a pro-Trump mob outside the Capitol, a leader of the far-right group sent a message to his colleagues: “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today.” Almost two years later, the notion that the Proud Boys wanted to provoke violence among the “normies” — or the normal people — in the crowd that day rests at the heart of the government’s case against five members of the group facing trial on charges of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack, reports the New York Times. At the trial, which begins with jury selection on Monday, prosecutors intend to argue that the five defendants turned the mob into a weapon on Jan. 6 and pointed it at the Capitol, where lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the 2020 election.
It was all part of a plot, the government will say, to stop the lawful transfer of power and ensure that President Trump remained in office. The Proud Boys trial is opening in Washington, D.C., less than a month after Stewart Rhodes, the leader of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, was convicted along with one of his lieutenants of seditious conspiracy. While prosecutors could have taken the five Proud Boys to trial on relatively simple charges like trespassing or interfering with law enforcement officers, they instead aimed higher and charged sedition, which carries a hefty 20-year maximum sentence and has more serious political connotations. By doing so, the government has assumed the burden of proving that the defendants plotted in advance of Jan. 6 to use force to oppose the authority of the U.S. government or to interfere with the execution of federal laws — in this case, those that govern the transfer of presidential power.
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