The conviction of Oath Keepers leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs on charges of seditious conspiracy is a historic legal victory for the Department of Justice, but it is much more than that as well.
Tuesday's verdicts in federal court in Washington will go a long way toward defining the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol melee, once and for all, as a heinous, purposeful crime orchestrated by enemies of democracy.
The prosecutors' focus was always first on convicting Rhodes, and to a lesser degree Meggs, of seditious conspiracy.
On all the other counts and with the other defendants, the jury's meticulous evaluation of the various charges--accepting some, rejecting others--only bolsters the credibility of their decisions. The lack of a clean sweep shows that the jurors exercised independent judgment; they didn't simply swallow the government's case whole. And all the defendants were convicted of serious charges carrying the potential for significant jail time.
Tuesday's decisions will have immediate, practical legal ramifications. First, those still to be tried for their involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, including Proud Boys and additional Oath Keepers, may want to think hard about pleading guilty and offering to cooperate with the government investigation.
More generally, the convictions represent a major advance in the Department of Justice's pursuit of accountability for all those involved in efforts to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. Now more than ever, the department is all in on treating the riot as the existential danger it was.
That means a no-stone-unturned approach to the role of political officials in the scandal, and in particular to the investigations that are now in the hands of special counsel Jack Smith, which mainly involve Donald Trump and his circle.
The practical and legal effects of the landmark result are only a fraction of the import of the convictions.
Some of the country's most prominent political leaders continue to embrace a ludicrous narrative that minimizes the events of Jan. 6. In their twisted telling, the riot was a legitimate political protest that got a little out of hand or even, in the words of Trump himself, represented courageous acts of patriots who have been treated unfairly by the Justice Department.
A jury trial represents our system's ideal of authoritative fact finding, a process enshrined in the Constitution for getting as close as a society can to the truth of a matter that is in dispute. And the jury in this trial plainly took its duty seriously and exercised its power with meticulous attention to detail.
That doesn't mean that the whole country will agree to call Jan. 6 a criminal conspiracy, but the holdouts are suddenly swimming against a stronger current.
The effect of these guilty verdicts, in a trial conducted with thoroughness and care, will be to marginalize the apologists for Jan. 6. They can't help but look more and more like wingnuts or monsters now, inveighing against what a critical mass of society has accepted and denying a jury's account that squares with what the whole country saw in real time.