"[T]hree different sets of jurors have concluded that Jan. 6 was no spontaneous riot. It was planned, organized, incited..."

"... and led by individuals and groups in a conspiracy against our democratically elected government... Evidence at the trial showed that three of the men convicted Thursday of seditious conspiracy — Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl — led a group of about 200 Proud Boys away from the Ellipse rally and toward the Capitol even before Trump had finished speaking, or ranting. The defendants themselves did not participate in the worst of the violence at the Capitol; Tarrio wasn’t even in Washington that day. But prosecutors argued — and jurors agreed — that Tarrio, Nordean, Biggs and Rehl were the leaders who sent other Proud Boys to commit some of the most violent acts of the day.... Trump... complains that the Justice Department is persecuting patriotic Americans who were doing nothing more than exercising their right to peacefully protest. That is an outrageous, disgusting lie.... Jurors are getting it right. Leaders of the insurrection should face the most serious charges and suffer the most severe punishments. Now we wait to see whether the man without whose incitement Jan. 6 never would have happened — Donald Trump — is made to face his day in court as well."

Writes Eugene Robinson in "The Proud Boys jury got it right on Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy" (WaPo).

I did not sit through the trial and don't know what evidence was presented, but Robinson asserts that the "[e]vidence at the trial showed" the defendants led a large group — known to be members of the Proud Boys — to the Capitol where and that group went beyond vocal protesting and committed acts of "violence." I still have the question: What evidence proved that this was "sedition"? I'm trying to understand how political protests come to be understood as "sedition." 

Here's a post of mine from January 2022, quoting Jeannie Suk Gersen in a New Yorker article asking whether a sincere belief that the election would undermine the charge of "sedition":

[A] seeming belief that his plan for January 6th was resistance to an unconstitutional process may seem wholly unreasonable.... But, if the case goes to trial... [s]ome jurors may find it difficult to convict...  if they find that sincere views about reality informed the defendants’ purpose....

I see that I thought the government would have difficulty proving the defendants were insincere in their purported belief and that we would put a great deal of effort into trying to understand whether they really believed what they said they believed or whether they actually wanted to overthrow the duly elected government. But that's not what I'm seeing. Robinson's column doesn't even deal with this issue. 

ADDED: From the NYT report on the conviction, "Four Proud Boys Convicted of Sedition in Key Jan. 6 Case/The verdict was a blow against the far-right group and another milestone in the Justice Department’s prosecution of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol":

[S]everal decisions by the presiding judge, Timothy J. Kelly, ... tested the boundaries of conspiracy law.

Judge Kelly’s rulings allowed prosecutors to introduce damning evidence about the violent behavior and aggressive language of members of the Proud Boys who had only limited connections to the five defendants.

Jurors heard "a trove of internal group chats and recordings revealed a toxic stew of machismo, homophobia and misogyny... casual antisemitism and, in some cases, promoting outright Nazi sympathy."

The rulings also permitted jurors to convict on conspiracy even if they found there was no plan to disrupt the certification of the election, but merely an unspoken agreement to do so....

Lacking a smoking gun, prosecutors used two cooperating witnesses, Jeremy Bertino and Matthew Greene, to make what amounted to an inferential case that the five defendants had worked together to violently subvert the democratic process....

Even if there were no explicit orders to attack the Capitol that day, [Bertino] said, members of the group believed there was an implicit agreement to band together and to take the lead in waging “all-out revolution” to stop Mr. Biden from entering the White House. “I expected them to save the country by any means necessary, up to and including violence,” Mr. Bertino said....

To build a case against the five men on trial, prosecutors convinced Judge Kelly to let them introduce videos of other Proud Boys and Trump supporters in the crowd who had acted violently, even if they had only limited connections to the defendants. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Tarrio and the other defendants wielded the others rioters as “tools” of their conspiracy — a novel legal strategy....