By Jacqueline Thomsen and Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge on Friday to sentence Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes to 25 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy and other charges over the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The Justice Department is also seeking a sentence of 21 years for another Oath Keepers leader, Kelly Meggs, who was also found guilty in November of seditious conspiracy by a Washington, D.C., jury.

Rhodes and Meggs are among 10 members of far-right groups found guilty of seditious conspiracy – a plot to oppose the government with force – for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which was an attempt to overturn Democratic President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

If fully imposed, the recommended sentences would be the longest so far for anyone convicted in connection with the Capitol riot. Prosecutors said the defendants “played a central and damning role” in the attack and should be sentenced more severely than other rioters because their conduct was comparable to domestic terrorism.

Earlier on Friday, Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania man with a lengthy criminal history, was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison for storming the Capitol, the longest prison term handed down so far.

Trump, who is now again seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in 2024, continues to falsely claim that his defeat was the result of fraud.

Meggs’ lawyer asked for a term of no more than 28 months in prison. Rhodes did not file his sentencing recommendation on Friday.

The same Washington jury that convicted Rhodes and Meggs cleared three other co-defendants, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell, of seditious conspiracy. But all five were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding – the congressional certification of the election results – with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges.

Prosecutors said they were seeking 18 years in prison for Watkins, 15 years for Harrelson and 14 years for Caldwell.

A lawyer for Caldwell asked the judge to impose no additional prison time and instead credit time he has served in home confinement.

A lawyer for Watkins did not make a specific recommendation, but asked the judge to consider Watkins’ personal struggles, including the harassment she said she faced in the U.S. Army for being transgender. Harrelson was given until Monday to file his recommendation with the court.

The charges of seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Sentences are left to the discretion of federal judges and are typically based on factors like past criminal history and the seriousness of the crime.

All five are scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

Four other members of the Oath Keepers David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo were convicted in January of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack. They are awaiting sentence.

The Justice Department also filed sentencing recommendations for that group, requesting prison terms of between 17 and 10 years for the four defendants.

Another federal jury on Thursday convicted former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of that far-right group of seditious conspiracy, but acquitted a fifth defendant on that count.

Five people including a police officer died during or shortly after the riot and more than 140 police officers were injured. The Capitol suffered millions of dollars in damage.

Of the more than 1,000 people who have so far been arrested on charges related to the riot, more than 525 have pleaded guilty and more than 65 have been found guilty, according to the Justice Department.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen and Andrew Goudsward; Writing by Jasper Ward; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Scott Malone, Leslie Adler and Kim Coghill)

Over the past few years, Martha Stewart has reinvented herself into a sex symbol — a title she thinks is “fantastic.”

The star dished on her healthy lifestyle, confidence and more in a new interview, explaining she’s proud that people are embracing their beauty at every age.

“It’s a good example for others, actually,” the 81-year-old told a magazine. “I’m a teacher. I’m trying to teach others that you can look great. There’s no reason to slump around.”

The businesswoman said she doesn’t actually “diet,” but she does watch what she eats, and everything the icon chows down on is organic.

When it comes to her flawless complexion, she insisted, “if you have good skincare, you can have beautiful skin. And it doesn’t have to cost a fortune, you just have to do it.”

Last but not least is a fitness routine, to which she revealed she does Pilates three times a week. The mom-of-one also dabbles in self-care regimens like massages and seeing a chiropractor.

“These are all things I just do to keep feeling good,” the chef simply stated.

Looking just as fabulous is also a plus, and she isn’t afraid to put her body of work on full display when the warm weather arrives.

“I love sort of baggy shorts, so I have accumulated a small collection of shorts,” she shared. “I’ve been working on my legs at Pilates, and I’m going to show them off this summer.”

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The cookbook author began gaining more attention in 2020 when she posted a thirst trap from the pool, though she admitted she wasn’t too surprised by the snap going viral.

“People like pretty pictures,” she reasoned to a news outlet. “I don’t think about age.”

When asked for her best selfie tips, she replied, “Work your best angles and project the jaw to look up towards the camera. Also, make sure you are optimizing lighting.”

While most fans are showering Stewart with praise, others accused her of going under the knife and using filters.

“No facelift .. unfiltered,” she hit back at one social media troll, insisting her pore-free face is due to “great” dermatologists and her lifestyle.

InStyle interviewed Stewart on being called a sex symbol.

Gwyneth Paltrow revealed which of her famous exes was better in bed!

While chatting with Alex Cooper on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, the star, 50, spilled secrets on whether Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck was a better kisser and who was better in bed.

“Let me think. Gosh, I have to remember so far back. They were both good kissers,” Paltrow confessed.

“Who was better in bed?” Cooper asked.

“That’s really hard … That is really hard, because … Brad was sort of major chemistry, love of your life … at the time,” the actress replied.

“And Ben was like technically excellent,” she quipped. “I can’t believe my daughter’s listening to this … Am I blushing?”

“God bless J.Lo and everything she is getting over there!” Cooper said, referring to Affleck’s wife, Jennifer Lopez.

As OK! previously reported, the blonde beauty reminisced about her broken engagement to Pitt.

“I had a lot of development to do, looking back in hindsight. In a lot of ways, I didn’t really fully start to come into myself until I was 40 years old. And I had such a pleasing issue. I didn’t really even understand how to listen to my instincts and act from that place for what was right for me. I was always trying to adjudicate what was right for everyone else,” she shared of why they couldn’t make things work.

She continued, “When I look back I really was a kid, really more than most 22, 24 years old I meet now. I really had not explored who I was, what was important to me, what my boundaries were.”

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The Glee alum and Pitt dated from 1994 to 1997, and she admitted she was totally heartbroken after they split.

“It was the right thing at that time, but it was really hard,” she added. “There were a number of things that had happened, he was nine years older than me so he was far more … he knew what he wanted, he was ready to do it and I was kind of all over the place, so it was really one of those difficult things, where I felt like, ‘Oh my God, not only am I not ready, I’m not living up to the standards again.’ It was a familiar refrain I felt about myself.”

An explosive rant captured on camera from far-right media personality Steven Crowder prompted ex-employees of his self-produced show, Louder with Crowder, to come forward with allegations of “abusive” behavior towards staff, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The video that sparked the allegations was taken on June 21, 2021, from his Ring security camera at his home. In the viral clip, Steven was seenberating his wife, Hillary, when she was eight months pregnant with twins.

Using expletives, Steven told his pregnant wife to “watch it” when she brought up his alleged “abusive” behavior — and demanded that she “do wifely things,” all while he reminded her that he did not love her.

After an ex-staff member of Steven’s show saw the footage, they blasted the host as “pathetic.”

“I’m not shocked, but it was pathetic what he did to Hilary,” the former employee told the Post. “That might not be the Steven you see on his show, but that was the real Steven.”

Hillary filed for divorce shortly after the video was taken. Ex-staff claimed that Steven’s behavior in the clip mirrored patterns of alleged abuse they had experienced when working for him.

At least 10 former staff members — who worked for Louder with Crowder between 2016 to 2022 — alleged that Steven was “abusive” and “volatile” at work. Some claimed that he was “capable of working every angle of your emotions.”

Allegations ranged from screaming at employees, including his own father, to making subordinates wash his dirty laundry and firing staff on a whim. Other allegations were more serious, such as the claim that Steven exposed his genitals to ex-staff.

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A former employee alleged that in 2018, ex-producer Jared Monroe, who had been dubbed “Not Gay Jared” by his boss, was subject to a crude joke that crossed the line when the crew was traveling on the road.

“Jared was asleep in the last row. Steven was in front and he was joking about what he was going to do,” the ex-staffer recalled. “He climbed over and dropped his junk on top of Jared’s shoulder.”

The same ex-employee also alleged that Steven exposed himself to Jared while the two were in a green room the year before.

“We don’t want Steven to suffer. We just want the abuse to stop or at least let future employees know what they’re getting themselves into,” another former employee said of their ex-boss.

Although the ex-staffers left Steven’s show, they insisted they felt the need to go public with their alleged experiences after viewing the Ring security footage.

Interestingly enough, Steven, a former child actor, built his success on the notion that he was a devout Christian and family man.

Julie Chrisley is having a hard time being away from her husband, Todd, and their faithful family, as she and her lover are only months in to their seven and 12-year respective prison sentences.

During the Monday, May 1, episode of her “Unlocked” podcast, the couple’s daughter, Savannah, revealed her mom and dad have not spoken since they surrendered themselves to police on Tuesday, January 17, after convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax fraud. Julie was also charged with a count of wire fraud.

“I don’t think there’s a single letter that goes by that she does not say how much she misses my dad,” the 25-year-old — who was granted full custody of her brother Grayson, 16, and niece Chloe, 10, while her parents are behind bars — confessed. (Chloe is the biological daughter of Todd and Julie’s son Kyle, however, the grandparents legally adopted her in 2016.

“They don’t get to talk. So we’re like, what, four months in, almost, and being together almost 30 years and not going a day without speaking, to now going on four months is a lot,” Savannah continued of her mom’s struggles in prison, specifically regarding the zero contact between her and Todd.

“She actually sent me 30 to 40 days’ worth of letters. It was just like her daily diary, journal,” the Growing Up Chrisley star added of Julie. “I’ll eventually put them out, read them at some point to give people updates on how they are doing and what was going through their minds.”

As for how Savannah has been handling everything, the media personally admitted: “It’s tough.”

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“It was a lot to read. It was tough to see the accounts of her day and things she’s scared of or nervous about. Just, all the thoughts that go through her mind and not having my dad with her, that’s the biggest thing,” she explained.

Savannah found a silver lining in the difficult time, which is that she’s able to hug her parents and spend up to seven hours with them at a time without having to speak through a glass divider.

“As sucky as the situation is, you have to find a win or else there’s gonna be no way to get through the day,” she explained.

Todd remains locked up at minimum security prison camp FPC Pensacola in Florida, while Julie is serving her sentence at Federal Medical Center Lexington in Kentucky.

By Jonathan Stempel and Jack Queen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -E. Jean Carroll, the writer accusing Donald Trump of rape and defamation, on Monday denied making up her claims to drive publicity for her memoir.

Testifying in Manhattan federal court after the judge denied Trump’s request for a mistrial, Carroll said she wasn’t seeking attention through appearances on TV and podcasts, while acknowledging they were an important driver of book sales.

Carroll also resisted efforts by Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina to show she experienced no suffering because, as Trump has claimed, the rape did not happen.

She said she hides her inner suffering in her role as an advice columnist, and that going to parties related to her lawsuits against Trump and stating publicly she was doing “fabulous” didn’t mean she was lying about him.

“In this courtroom, I’m being forced to tell the truth,” she told Tacopina on her third and final day of testimony, including two under cross-examination.

Carroll, 79, says Trump, 76, raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996, and then tarred her reputation and career by lying about it online.

Her defamation claim concerns an October 2022 post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, where Trump called the former Elle magazine advice columnist’s case a “complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.”

Carroll used to write for Elle magazine, and is now at Substack.

The rape claim was included in her memoir, “What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal,” excerpts of which were published in New York magazine in June 2019.

Carroll is seeking unspecified damages in her civil lawsuit.

She is suing Trump separately for defamation after he denied her claims, using similar language, after the book excerpts were published.

Trump has not attended the trial, now in its fourth day. On Monday, he was in Scotland to visit his golf courses there.

TRUMP LAWYER SEEKS MISTRIAL, ACCUSES JUDGE OF BIAS

In seeking a mistrial, Tacopina sent an 18-page letter early on Monday accusing U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of bias against Trump.

Tacopina said several “unfair and prejudicial” rulings by Kaplan reflected a “deeper leaning” toward Carroll, including comments where the judge “openly expresses favoritism.”

Trump is leading the Republican field in the 2024 presidential race.

Tacopina said Kaplan, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, should have let him question Carroll about why she did not seek security camera footage of the alleged rape.

He also challenged Kaplan’s statement that Trump might be “sailing in harm’s way” after his son Eric Trump discussed on Twitter how LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman was helping fund Carroll’s case.

Kaplan ruled last Wednesday that Trump’s lawyers could not mention Hoffman at the trial, calling it “unfairly prejudicial.”

Requests for mistrials often fail, but form a basis for eventual appeals.

Because Carroll’s case is civil, she must establish her claims by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning more likely than not, and need not meet the tougher criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

ASHAMED AT FIRST TO COME FORWARD, CARROLL SAYS

Carroll had told jurors last Wednesday that Trump put his fingers into her vagina, which she called “extremely painful, extremely painful,” and then inserted his penis.

In Monday’s cross-examination, Carroll acknowledged not following her own advice to readers that they tell police if they are crime victims, after Tacopina questioned why she did not after encountering Trump.

“Listen, I was ashamed of what happened,” Carroll said. “I thought it was my fault.”

She said it was not until 2017, when the #MeToo movement began, that she finally began to “realize some really terrible things that I did not want to face.”

Tacopina asked why Carroll did not sue former CBS chief executive Les Moonves for defamation after he publicly denied her claim in her memoir that he once tried to sexually assault her.

Carroll responded that Moonves’ denial was more straightforward than Trump’s.

“He didn’t grind my face into the mud the way Donald Trump did,” Carroll said.

Trump’s lawyers have not said publicly whether he plans to testify. They have identified only one possible defense witness, the psychiatrist Edgar Nace, other than Trump.

Testimony is expected to resume on Tuesday.

Carroll’s witness list includes two friends with whom she spoke shortly after the alleged rape, two other women who have said Trump assaulted them, and a professor who could help jurors estimate Carroll’s damages.

Several women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. He has denied their allegations.

(Reporting by Jack Queen and Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Howard Goller)