Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes, speaks during the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley. [Source: Reuters]

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia group, was found guilty on Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The verdicts against Rhodes and four co-defendants, after three days of deliberations by the 12-member jury, came in the highest-profile trial so far to emerge from the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, with other high-profile trials due to begin next month.

Rhodes, a Yale Law School-educated former Army paratrooper and disbarred attorney, was accused by prosecutors during an eight-week trial of fomenting a plot to use force to try to block Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump, a Republican. Rhodes was convicted on three counts and acquitted on two.

One of his co-defendants, Kelly Meggs, was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy while the three others – Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell – were acquitted of that charge. All five defendants were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding – the congressional certification of the election results – with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges.

The charges of seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta presided over the trial.

Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face with his own gun, is one of the most prominent defendants of the roughly 900 charged so far in connection with the attack. Meggs, who heads the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, was the only defendant besides Rhodes in this trial who played a leadership role in the organization.

Rhodes in 2009 founded the Oath Keepers, a militia group whose members include current and retired U.S. military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders. Its members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events around the United States including the racial justice demonstrations following the murder of a Black man named George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.