How many people in total were charged with seditious conspiracy for Jan. 6 and what were their final dispositions?
Executive summary
Federal prosecutors ultimately brought seditious-conspiracy charges only against a small subset of Jan. 6 defendants — concentrated in two organized groups — and courts adjudicated those cases through a mix of trials, guilty pleas, prison sentences and, later, politically consequential acts of clemency; reporting summarizes the universe as 14 defendants charged with seditious conspiracy, of whom ten were convicted at trial and four pleaded guilty [1]. These defendants were overwhelmingly members or leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, and their fates ranged from multi‑year prison terms to sentences later affected by pardons and commutations [2] [3] [4].
1. How many people were charged with seditious conspiracy — the headline number
Authoritative legal reporting counts 14 defendants who were charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack: ten were convicted after trial and four more pleaded guilty to the charge, and all of those defendants belonged to either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys [1] [2]. Government and academic summaries likewise single out those two organizations as the principal targets for seditious‑conspiracy indictments, even as thousands of other Jan. 6 defendants faced a wide range of charges from trespass to assault [2] [5].
2. Who those defendants were and which organizations they represented
The seditious‑conspiracy cases mainly involved Oath Keepers arrested in January 2022 and Proud Boys leaders indicted in June 2022: Stewart Rhodes and several Oath Keepers were charged and later convicted for plotting and coordinating the breach, and five Proud Boys leaders—Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola—were indicted for seditious conspiracy as a separate group [6] [4]. Department of Justice statements and congressional reporting emphasized that these were organized conspiracies distinct from the many individual trespass and misdemeanor prosecutions that made up the larger Jan. 6 docket [3] [6].
3. Final dispositions: trials, guilty pleas, and sentences
By the metrics reported, ten defendants were convicted at trial and four pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy [1]. High‑profile sentences include long prison terms for leaders of both groups: Stewart Rhodes received an 18‑year sentence for seditious conspiracy, Kelly Meggs received 12 years, and Proud Boys leaders received multi‑year sentences—Joseph Biggs was reported sentenced to 17 years, Zachary Rehl to 15 years, and Dominic Pezzola to 10 years for related convictions [2] [4]. The Department of Justice framed these outcomes as major accomplishments in holding “leaders” accountable and said the prosecutions produced more than 600 convictions across Jan. 6 cases broadly [3].
4. Post‑sentencing developments and political interventions
Reporting documents that political actions affected some of these outcomes: sources note mass pardons or commutations issued on January 20, 2025 that altered the post‑conviction status of several Proud Boys defendants — for example, Enrique Tarrio was reported pardoned while others had sentences commuted to time served — an outcome that commentators linked to a broader effort to reshape public memory of Jan. 6 [4] [7]. The existence of those clemency actions underscores that final legal disposition can include executive decisions that change imprisonment outcomes even after trial and sentencing [4] [7].
5. Caveats, competing counts and why tallies differ
Different outlets and official statements sometimes report different numbers because they use varying cutoffs — some count only convictions at trial, some include guilty pleas, and others note related obstruction or conspiracy counts that are not labeled “seditious conspiracy.” The Lawfare summary that gives the 14‑defendant total explicitly separates trial convictions from guilty pleas , and other DOJ and congressional documents emphasize that only a handful of defendants faced seditious‑conspiracy charges amid the much larger corpus of Jan. 6 prosecutions [1] [3] [6]. Where sources diverge, reporting reflects those methodological differences rather than substantive disagreement about the core seditious‑conspiracy prosecutions.