UPDATED: Barr: Consider Charging Sedition

The WSJ is reporting that AG Barr is telling prosecutors to be aggressive in their charging decisions with regard to violent demonstrators and, specifically, to consider charging violent demonstrators with variations on sedition. Here are highlights from the article, omitting tendentious rhetoric:

Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting protesters for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government, people familiar with the conversation said. 

In a conference call with U.S. attorneys across the country last week, Mr. Barr ... 

... 

Federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people with violent crimes related to the protests, most of whom face counts of arson, assaulting federal officers, or gun crimes. ... 

In the call last week, Mr. Barr urged prosecutors to seek federal charges whenever possible, two of the people said. He listed a number of additional statutes they could potentially use, including one addressing conspiracies or plots to overthrow the government. ... 

To bring a sedition case, prosecutors would have to prove there was a conspiracy to attack government agents or officials that posed an imminent danger, legal experts said. Rhetoric alone wouldn’t suffice. 

Officials have also discussed using a statute that allows prosecutors to bring a federal case against someone who impedes or obstructs a law enforcement officer responding to unrest, which experts said is also infrequently applied and could raise similar challenges. Federal prosecutors in June brought that charge against three people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at New York City police vehicles during protests. ...

The statutes under which such charges could be brought are grouped in

18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 115— TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES

Below is the table of contents for Chapter 115, and I've bolded those sections that are most likely to include what Barr has in mind:

1. § 2381. Treason
2. § 2382. Misprision of treason
3. § 2383. Rebellion or insurrection
4. § 2384. Seditious conspiracy
5. § 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government
6. § 2386. Registration of certain organizations
7. § 2387. Activities affecting armed forces generally
8. § 2388. Activities affecting armed forces during war
9. § 2389. Recruiting for service against United States
10. § 2390. Enlistment to serve against United States

UPDATE: Shipwreckedcrew is on it: Attorney General Barr is Serious About Federal Prosecutors Using the Sedition Statute.

Answer me this. In his tenure at DoJ, have you ever know Bill Barr to bluff? Me neither. If he brings the topic up, he's serious about it. And that probably means that, after Trump wins, bygones will NOT be bygones:

Nothing in the statute requires that the effort to “overthrow” the government have any remote chance of succeeding — “impossibility” is not a defense.  Proof of the offense requires only an analysis of commentary and activity.  The evidence of the activity is in the streets of various US cities, and on tens of thousands of hours of video posted online — not to mention covert video recorded by law enforcement in dozens of localities.

Commentary will come from the recorded conversations that have no doubt been intercepted involving various actors identified over the past 90 days at least.  Building cases based on such intercepts takes a bit of time, as a jumbled mess of information needs to be sorted through and assembled in a coherent manner.

Testimonial evidence will also come in the form of cooperator testimony — yes, some of those Marxists will decide that cooperation is a better alternative than 20 years in jail.

But the realization by criminals that they have been surveiled and intercepted ALWAYS comes too late in the game.  The Antifa/BLM agitators have faded into the shadows because they know “the heat is on.”  I would speculate the likelihood is quite high already that discovery in the dozens criminal cases filed in federal courts has already resulted in the production of text messages, emails, and likely even recorded conversations between Antifa/BLM agitators, and the possession of such evidence by the federal prosecutors has filtered its way to those persons who have funded and organized the protest efforts all throughout the summer.

Suddenly feeling exposed, those promoters have gone underground.

Get that? The Resistance has their own "filter team." Which is no doubt part of the reason Pelosi has done an about face and is now calling for prosecution of rioters--it's a warning.