The leader and one official of an American militia involved in attacking the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021 have received long prison terms for sedition.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment while the chief of the group’s Florida branch, Kelly Meggs, got a 12-year sentence for plotting to overthrow the government or unlawfully opposing its authority.

“Seditious conspiracy is among the most serious crimes an American can commit,” Judge Amit Mehta said in pronouncing Rhodes’ sentence.

“You present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country,” Mehta told Rhodes, who organized the Oath Keepers’ participation in the Capitol attack by supporters of
then-president Donald Trump.

Rhodes, Meggs and three other Oath Keepers were convicted by a Washington jury in November in the first trial to apply the charge of sedition to the actions of some of those involved in the rioting.

During the Oath Keepers trial, prosecutors said the group “concocted a plan for an armed rebellion… plotting to oppose by force the government of the United States.”