Four More Oath Keepers Members Convicted of Sedition in Second Trial

WASHINGTON — Four additional members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Monday for their roles in trying to keep Donald J. Trump in office after his 2020 election defeat, nearly two months after the group’s leader — Stewart Rhodes — was convicted of the same offense in a separate trial in November.

A jury in Federal District Court in Washington also found the four defendants guilty of two separate conspiracy charges.

The defendants — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — were originally charged along with Mr. Rhodes and other members of the group. But their trial was broken off as a separate proceeding by the judge in the case, Amit P. Mehta, because of space constraints in the courtroom.

The jury returned the decision after about 15 hours of deliberation over three days, and it came as a parallel sedition trial for members of the Proud Boys — another far-right group that joined the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 — continued to play out in the same courthouse.

The earlier trial of members of the Oath Keepers resulted in a more mixed outcome, with two of five defendants, Mr. Rhodes and a longtime ally, Kelly Meggs, found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge. The jury in the earlier case acquitted Mr. Rhodes of two separate conspiracy charges.

The government depicted the defendants in the second trial as lower in the organization’s power hierarchy than those in the first case, and more readily employed as foot soldiers for the group than as top operational coordinators.

Prosecutors had argued that on the day of the riot, Mr. Hackett and Mr. Moerschel joined a group of 12 others as the “boots on the ground,” forcing their way into the Capitol on Jan. 6 with “brute strength.”

They said that Mr. Minuta, a New York tattoo artist, followed shortly behind with a separate group that clashed aggressively with Capitol Police officers inside. Earlier that day, Mr. Minuta and his group had provided security for Roger J. Stone Jr., a former adviser to Mr. Trump, and rushed to the Capitol on golf carts to join compatriots and confront police officers.

Prosecutors described how Mr. Vallejo, an Army veteran from Arizona, kept watch over an arsenal of guns stashed in a hotel in Virginia as part of a “quick reaction force” that could deliver weapons to those members in Washington in the event of a breakdown in the rule of law.