Oath Keeper Joshua James, 34, of Arab, Alabama, entered into an agreement with the government where he will become a cooperating witness and testify before a grand jury. To secure this deal, he also pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and one count of obstructing an official proceeding. In return, the prosecutors dropped a host of other charges, including assault of a police officer.

This is important because the act of securing a conviction of seditious conspiracy establishes a legal basis and precedent for arguing that the January 6 assault on the Capitol was part of a seditious conspiracy. The charge itself has two parts.

Federal law defines seditious conspiracy as two or more people who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

Mr. James’ defense lawyers insist that their client only copped to the second part of the charge and not the first. In other words, he acknowledges that storming the Capitol delayed and hindered the official counting of the Electoral College votes, but argues that this wasn’t an effort to overthrow by force the U.S. government. That’s ridiculous, of course, since if the riot had succeeded in keeping Trump in the White House it would have overthrown the Biden Administration. That was the entire point.

Relatedly, the House committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt has submitted a brief to a federal court in California stating that Trump may have been part of a criminal conspiracy to “to defraud the United States” and “obstruct an official congressional proceeding” by interfering in the counting of the electoral votes. They can now define that as sedition, as it’s established that it was a seditious act.

People can call it sedition until they’re blue in the face, but rhetoric and semantics are no match for legal determinations. We can no say that according to the law and the courts, the January 6 riot was an effort to overthrow the government. And it’s not hard to prove that Trump was the instigator and leader of that conspiracy.

It may be hard to find 12 jurors that doesn’t include at least one die-hard Trumper who refuses to convict, but there is a firm case now. The case must be brought.