Washington A supporter of Donald Trump who was one of the first rioters to enter the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was found guilty of planning to murder FBI special agents who were looking into his crimes there.
Edward Kelley was found guilty on Wednesday of three additional charges: conspiracy to murder U.S. employees; solicitation to commit a crime of violence; and influencing or retaliating against federal officials by threat. Kelley was previously convicted last week of assaulting law enforcement officers and other offenses during the Capitol attack.
The trial for the murder plan began Monday in Knoxville, Tennessee. After only an hour of deliberation, the jury found Kelley guilty on all three counts, according to Knoxville’s NBC News station WBIR. One month after being sentenced in his Capitol case on April 7, Kelley will be sentenced in the murder plot case on May 7.
Co-defendant Austin Carter, who entered a guilty plea in November 2023, testified at Kelley’s trial in Knoxville. In December 2022, months after Kelley’s arrest on Jan. 6 charges, Carter informed officials that he and Kelley had conspired to kill Federal Bureau of Investigation employees. Prosecutors claimed that Kelley gave them a list of roughly 37 law enforcement personnel who worked on his case on January 6.
Carter told jurors that Kelley believed the nation was on the verge of civil war and wanted to strike first. He first intended to attack the FBI Knoxville field office before deciding to target specific FBI personnel who had worked on his Jan. 6 case, according to WBIR.
Three FBI special agents testified throughout the trial that they perceived the list as a threat, as did Christopher Roddy, who had worked with Kelley in security and had tipped off the FBI.
When he became the fourth rioter to break into the U.S. Capitol, anti-abortion activist Kelley was wearing a sweater that read TCAPP, which stands for The Church At Planned Parenthood. The government said that Kelley had been carrying a firearm when he stormed the Capitol during his trial in Washington on the counts from January 6. Despite demonstrating that Kelley had a concealed pistol holster on the inside of his jeans and what they thought was the “printing” of a gun, the prosecution did not provide concrete evidence to support this claim, nor was it a major part of their case.
Prosecutors claimed that Kelley’s wife messaged him to inquire about his well-being during the Jan. 6 attack, stating that she didn’t trust the “fake news.” According to the prosecution, Kelley urged his wife to download the encrypted communications software Signal.
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