Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, has been arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, authorities said Thursday.

Rhodes is the highest-ranking member of an extremist group to be arrested in the deadly siege, and it is the first time the Justice Department has brought a seditious conspiracy charge in connection with the attack on the Capitol.

He is charged along with more than a dozen other members and associates of the Oath Keepers, who authorities say came to Washington, D.C., intent on stopping