DOJ suddenly requests longer prison sentences for seditious conspiracy ahead of Donald Trump indictment

| 3:00 pm EDT July 13, 2023
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Months after seven Oath Keepers were given rather long prison sentences by the court system for their seditious conspiracy convictions, the DOJ is now asking the courts to go back and make those sentences even longer. On first blush it feels like the DOJ is simply trying to send a message: even Stewart Rhodes’ eighteen year prison sentence isn’t long enough for trying to overthrow the United States government. But the timing of the move makes it feel like there could be more to it.

We still don’t know what precise charges Jack Smith is planning to bring against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in relation to January 6th, the fake elector scheme, and the overall attempt at overthrowing the 2020 election. But we do know that Jack Smith’s grand jury is back in session this week, doesn’t appear to be hearing from any witnesses, and may now be in the process of issuing indictments.

So what’s going on here? The DOJ certainly had to be hoping that getting convicted at trial and sent to prison for the majority of their remaining lifespan would have been enough to get at least some of these Oath Keepers to enter into cooperation agreements. But as far as anyone knows, none of them have. A handful of Oath Keepers flipped a long time ago. But the ones who decided to go to trial and got convicted are still sticking to their guns. This could be an attempt at pressuring these Oath Keepers into flipping on people like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, at a time when the likes of Stone and Flynn may be on the verge of indictment.

On the other hand, if Jack Smith is indeed about to indict any political figures for seditious conspiracy, the DOJ could now be trying to set a precedent for just how serious of a charge seditious conspiracy is and just how harsh the punishment should be. It’s almost as if the DOJ is trying to say that if Stewart Rhodes should get longer than eighteen years in prison for trying to overthrow the government, so should Donald Trump when he gets to trial.

We’ll see where this goes. Sometimes things do happen out of pure coincidence. But we’re at a point where the DOJ is making the extraordinarily rare move of going back well after the fact and asking the courts to make existing prison sentences for seditious conspiracy longer, just as the DOJ appears to be preparing to indict bigger fish on charges along the lines of seditious conspiracy. The timing of all this is at least worth keeping an eye on.