A net of justice is tightening around 2020 election deniers and may be closing in on Trump

It turns out that there is a heavy price for trying to steal votes, defaming defenseless election workers and invading the US Capitol to try to thwart a democratic transfer of presidential power. And accountability is moving ever closer to Donald Trump.

America’s judicial system is accelerating its effort to punish the ex-president, his acolytes and supporters who tried to subvert the 2020 election, in the process becoming the primary vehicle shoring up the country’s still-threatened democracy.

On Thursday alone, two members of the far-right Proud Boys group received long sentences despite their pleas for mercy from a judge after they were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their actions during the January 6, 2021, mob attack on Congress.

“The nature of the constitutional moment we were in that day is something that is so sensitive that it deserves a significant sentence,” Judge Timothy Kelly told one of the defendants. The admonition encapsulated the effort by the criminal justice system to respond to an unprecedented assault on US democracy.