Two more Oath Keepers members face sedition charges in the January 6 case
A federal judge on Friday sentenced two members of the Oath Keepers militia to less than four years in prison for seditious conspiracy, putting the brakes on government efforts to impose long terms on members of the group for their roles in the attack at the Capitol on January 6. , 2021.
The two men, David Moerschel and Joseph Hackett, who traveled from Florida on January 6 to join the Oath Keepers in Washington, were given terms of three years and three and a half years, respectively.
Judge Amit P. Mehta, who has presided over three separate Oath Keepers trials, all of which have now concluded, deviated from federal guidelines in his decisions in Washington’s Federal District Court this week. Prosecutors had demanded 12 years for Mr Moerschel and 10 years for Mr Hackett.
The prison sentences were in stark contrast to the sentences Judge Mehta handed down last week to the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, and one of his deputies, Kelly Meggs. They received 18 years and 12 years respectively. The judge leaned toward leniency with members lower in the hierarchy of the Oath Keepers. Two others convicted of seditious conspiracy were sentenced this week to no more than four and a half years in prison.
“Condemnation should not be vindictive; it shouldn’t be overly harsh, just to be harsh,” Judge Mehta said at the end of Mr. Moerschel’s hearing.
On the day of the riot, both Mr. Moerschel and Mr. Hackett marched in a “stack” formation led by Mr. Meggs, fighting their way past police officers and into the Capitol.
Both were also part of a group chat for Florida members in which Mr. Rhodes repeatedly encouraged people to come to Washington to contest the election results.
“We have to make those senators very uncomfortable as we are all several hundred feet away,” Mr. Rhodes wrote to the group two weeks before Jan. 6.
Prosecutors stressed on Friday that Mr. Moerschel had brought his own guns prior to the riot, stashing his AR-15 rifle and semiautomatic pistol among a stash of guns members had collected in Virginia a day earlier. They told the judge they believed Mr. Moerschel came to Washington ready to respond to “the impulses of madmen” like Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Meggs, and ready to take up arms in Washington if the Oath Keeper called for it . leaders or former President Donald J. Trump.
Judge Mehta determined that the behavior of both men on January 6 amounted to an act of terrorism and applied a sentence that slightly extended their prison sentences.
Yet on Friday he appeared to accept assurances that the two men had come to view their association with the Oath Keepers as painfully misleading, driven by loud and influential voices within the group and on conservative platforms and social media.
“Choices are not made in a vacuum; we make choices with the information we have,” said Angela Halim, Mr. Hackett’s attorney.
In handing down the Oath Keeper verdicts this week, Judge Mehta repeatedly emphasized that even those relatively young members of the group who had not been directly involved in violence with police had nevertheless added to the chaos during the riot by acting as an organized militia to down the Capitol.
“If you act with others, the danger is greater than if you act alone,” he said. “If the law is against the government, it makes the behavior particularly dangerous.”