The January 6 Plea Deals: Cooperation, Felony, and Misdemeanor Plea Deals
Later today, Graydon Young, one of the people charged in the Oath Keeper conspiracy, will plead guilty. We won’t know until then whether his plea includes a cooperation agreement or not. He only joined the Oath Keepers in December 2020, but because he was in Florida, he may know about some key events leading up to January 6, including this book event with Roger Stone and Kelly Meggs’ wife, Connie.
Days after the event, Kelly Meggs described having set up an organized alliance between Florida militias.
Also this afternoon, Anna Morgan-Lloyd will be the first January 6 defendant to be sentenced; the government has recommended she get a three year probation sentence.
In anticipation of what will soon turn into a flood of pleas, I wanted to lay out what we’ve seen so far.
Update: Judge Lamberth did give Anna Morgan-Lloyd probation, but gave her 3 times the community service — 120 hours rather than 40 — as the government requested. Update: it was docketed as 40 hours. So I guess she got exactly what prosecutors asked for.
Cooperation Agreement
Jon Schaffer: Schaffer is the only cooperation agreement we know about, but that may be because of a docket fail. There are certainly other people I suspect are cooperating, and there are sealed filings that could suggest cooperators. He pled to obstruction and entering the building with a deadly weapon. His guidelines sentence is 41-51 months.
Plea (includes 5K1), but no assigned restitution amount
Graydon Young: Young also entered into a cooperation agreement. He is pleading to conspiracy and obstruction, and faces a guideline sentence of 63-78 months.
Plea (includes 5K1) and restitution
Felony Plea
In spite of Paul Hodgkins’ notable use of latex gloves (which he put on in an attempt to offer Joshua Black First Aid), his was a straight plea. As a felony plea, his includes sentencing guidelines for pleading to obstruction, 18 U.S.C. §1512 (which for Hodgkins was 15 to 21 months) and $2,000 restitution.
Paul Hodgkins (my post on his plea)
Misdemeanor Plea
The misdemeanor pleas we’ve seen so far require the defendant to plead to one of what is often four trespass charges. The pleas include $500 restitution and, for most (but not Reeder), a “cooperation with additional investigation” paragraph requiring an interview and a review of social media with law enforcement.
Anna Morgan-Lloyd (my post on her effort to express remorse)
I’m curious if 3-5 years in federal slammer may result in facilitating some undesirable connections — imprisoned Aryan Nation connections, etc. — for at least some of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Tree Percenters they otherwise wouldn’t have unless they’ve served time in jail, in ways that will be bad down the road?
Some might be scared straight; others, and probably a lot of the ones already ready to rabble rouse, break skulls, and attack police officers, are likely to become more extreme.
The PB, OK, and 3P are already White Supremacists Custom Deluxe. The only ways they differ from the Aryan Brotherhood are in their seeming lack of willingness to kill to enforce loyalty, and how they fund their activities. The AB would have to go a ways to become any more radical than any of those three groups. That said, they also have considerably more presence in state penitentiaries than in federal.
I️ thought the same thing about prison time.. We’re talking about people / groups who felt it was their American duty to “stop the steal” of the election by rioting in the capital. My fear is it will create a martyr out of rioters, or connect larger networks of anti-government groups
Grayon Young’s guilty plea has include an agreement to cooperate with the government.
Some outlets have him as part of a 16 member conspiracy charge that collects a group of OatKs. Which seems to show DoJ running normally.
Wonder how many of the OatK “patsies for Trump” are staying mum, banking on a pardon from an imagined 47?
These “milestones” do not impress me. Two hundred perpetrators who acted violently are still at large. But they are all low hanging fruit. There were leaders and planners and Inciters of the Jan 6 Insurrection. FBI must identify and have proof before they can charge anyone with a crime. That said, I am waiting impatiently for those higher level perps to be identified and charged.
This is totally ridiculous. Prosecuting large conspiracy cases takes a LOT of time, even when they do not involve potential First Amendment and identification issues. People really need to step back, get a grip, and understand that these matters are actually flying along at warp speed relatively.