How many defendants have been convicted of seditious conspiracy in Jan 6 cases and what sentences did they receive?
Executive summary
Federal prosecutors charged 18 people in connection with the Jan. 6 attack with the rarely used Civil War–era count of seditious conspiracy; according to reporting aggregated in these sources, 14 of those people were ultimately convicted of that charge — four by plea and ten at trial — though not all sentenced terms are specified in the documents provided [1]. Among the convictions with published prison terms in the supplied reporting, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes received 18 years and fellow Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs received 12 years, while a separate group of four Oath Keepers drew sentences roughly between three and four-and-a-half years [2] [3].
1. The prosecutorial sweep: 18 charged, 14 convicted
The Department of Justice pursued seditious-conspiracy allegations against 18 individuals tied to Jan. 6, and the sources used for this analysis state that of those 18, four pleaded guilty and ten were found guilty at trial, yielding 14 convictions on the seditious-conspiracy charge [1]. That total aligns with the DOJ’s broader strategy of bringing a limited number of high-stakes sedition cases against leaders and organizers of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys while securing many other convictions on related statutes across hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions [4] [5].
2. Oath Keepers: headline sentences and smaller terms
The Oath Keepers produced several of the earliest and most consequential seditious-conspiracy convictions: founder Stewart Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs were convicted and later sentenced — Rhodes received an 18‑year term and Meggs 12 years, as reported in contemporaneous coverage [2]. A subsequent trial that produced convictions of four other Oath Keepers — Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — resulted in shorter sentences, each roughly in the 3‑ to 4.5‑year range, according to The Washington Post’s reporting on those sentencings [3]. The DOJ’s own summaries describe multiple Oath Keepers trials and list additional guilty pleas and convictions but do not in these extracts give an exhaustive sentence-by-sentence accounting for every defendant [6] [7].
3. Proud Boys: convictions achieved, sentencing details incomplete in supplied reporting
The Proud Boys’ leadership was the target of a major seditious‑conspiracy prosecution that produced convictions of four members — including Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl — when juries found them guilty of seditious conspiracy and related counts [8] [9] [4]. While multiple outlets and DOJ releases confirm those guilty verdicts [4] [8], the sentence lengths for those Proud Boys defendants are not specified in the provided source excerpts; some reporting references forthcoming sentencing or prosecutorial recommendations but does not supply finalized terms within these documents [9] [10].
4. What the records supplied do not fully show
The supplied sources permit a clear answer to how many people were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 prosecutions (14, per the compiled reporting), and they document several specific sentences — most notably Rhodes’ 18 years, Meggs’ 12 years, and the 3–4.5 year terms for four other Oath Keepers — but they do not provide a complete, defendant‑by‑defendant sentencing table for every convicted person [1] [2] [3]. Some pieces (DOJ press releases and news stories) note additional convictions, guilty pleas, and sentencing events without attaching every numerical sentence to the individual named in these excerpts, so any claim beyond the documented items above would exceed what these sources explicitly state [6] [7] [5].
5. Bottom line and caveats
Using the documents provided, the verified count of Jan. 6 seditious‑conspiracy convictions is 14 — four guilty pleas and ten guilty verdicts at trial — and among the convictions for which sentence lengths are reported here the most significant penalties were Stewart Rhodes’ 18 years and Kelly Meggs’ 12 years, with four other Oath Keepers receiving about 3 to 4.5 years; the Proud Boys convictions are confirmed but the supplied texts do not list their sentences [1] [2] [3] [8]. Further precision — a full roster with every sentenced term — requires consulting the original DOJ case dockets and subsequent sentencing orders, which are not attached to the excerpts provided here [6] [7].