The federal government's approach to the January 6 insurrection has built on that prosecutorial approach. Bringing charges of seditious conspiracy against leaders of far-right organizations involved in the insurrection, the Department of Justice has returned to the prosecution of organized far-right conspiracies, rather than treating them as lone-wolf cases. That approach has met with success: A leader of the Oath Keepers, one of the groups involved in the insurrection,
has pled guilty to seditious conspiracy charges. There is speculation that Reffitt's guilty verdict
could prompt plea agreements in some of the cases of hundreds of remaining January 6 defendants.
Add to that the jury conviction, and it becomes clear that something has shifted in the legal system's ability -- from investigation to trial to jury deliberation -- to see violent far-right extremism for what it is: illiberal and unlawful.
While that may seem painfully obvious after the violent spectacles of the past five years, it has taken the legal system a very long time to catch up. But, however long the delay, we should be grateful that it has. As the evolution from the Charlottesville rally to the Capitol insurrection shows, far-right extremism has grown more enmeshed in Republican politics in recent years, and we will need a focused and functioning legal system to counter it.
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