A member of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for participating in the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jessica Watkins was convicted in November by a federal jury in Washington DC of obstruction of an official proceeding after storming the Capitol, which saw rioters battle police, smash windows and enter the Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watkins was also convicted of conspiracy and obstruction of officers during the riots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US District Judge Amit Mehta said it was “particularly hard” to issue a sentence, following testimony during the trial about Watkins’ struggles with being transgender and cooperation with law enforcement during their investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, he said that “doesn’t wipe out” Watkins actions during the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Your role that day was more aggressive, more assaultive, more purposeful than perhaps others,” Judge Mehta added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenneth Harrelson, another Oath Keeper convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, was also found guilty of conspiring to prevent members of Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election win as well as tampering with documents and proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He will be sentenced later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watkins and Harrelson were both acquitted of seditious conspiracy charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A member of the Oath Keepers extremist group was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for participating in the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Jessica Watkins was convicted in November by a federal jury in Washington DC of obstruction of an official proceeding after storming the Capitol, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[2700,2701,193,2702,1276],"class_list":["post-6882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-capitol-riot","tag-militia-group","tag-news","tag-oath-keepers","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6884,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882\/revisions\/6884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}