A federal judge denied an eleventh-hour request on Wednesday by Oath Keeper leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes to delay his Sept. 27 seditious conspiracy trial and switch out attorneys who have represented him since his initial indictment.
The hearing was tense as Rhodes’ defense attorney James Bright at one point suggested Rhodes was “outright lying” when making complaints about his counsel’s performance. Rhodes claimed, among other grievances, that Bright and co-counsel Phillip Linder promised to depose certain witnesses at trial including John Siemens, an Oath Keeper who Rhodes said handled daily operations for the organization.
Bright bristled at that suggestion and others on Wednesday during the hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta. Bright emphasized he did not promise to depose anyone specifically and he took umbrage at Rhodes’ sudden suggestion that he or Linder had effectively checked out on their client by taking extended vacations or ignoring his calls.
To the contrary, Bright said Wednesday, he had even spent Labor Day weekend working on jury questionnaires remotely with U.S. attorneys.
“Perhaps it is a broken relationship, your honor,” Bright said. "I'm real strained right now to not tell the court that this isn't a broken relationship."
It was not until the new attorney requested by Rhodes just 24 hours ago—Ed Tarpley—conceded that he would not be prepared to mount a defense of Rhodes within such a limited time frame that Bright walked the comment about his client back.
Offering an apology to the court and to Rhodes, Bright said he should have described the Oath Keeper’s complaints as “dramatic characterizations.”
Mehta was often blunt during the hearing and remarked that Rhodes’ assertions left him “frankly bewildered.”
He told Tarpley it would be “humanly impossible” for him to be ready for trial even if he granted a 90 day-minimum delay, as Rhodes had requested.
”I’m sure Mr. Tarpley is a fine and talented lawyer,” Mehta said. “But no lawyer is going to be ready to try this case in 90 days, let alone three weeks.”
Mehta ordered Bright and Linder to remain on the case and said he wouldn’t allow Rhodes or Tarpley to wreak “havoc” on the docket.
The docket at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is indeed laden with cases from Jan. 6. The insurrection has caused major “traffic jams” at the court, Mehta said
And even if he granted the delay, the court’s calendar would then simply not permit Rhodes to stand trial until July 2023.
If his case was a simple one, and not on the magnitude of seditious conspiracy, shifts in schedule might be simpler, Mehta acknowledged. But prosecutors have already said they expect the trial to last four to six weeks. Mehta said Wednesday he suspects the four-week marker is correct given the huge amount of evidence and number of co-defendants in play.
On Rhodes’ complaints that his lawyers are hard to contact, that meetings are too infrequent, and that discovery has simply been too large or that prosecutors have been cagey about sharing evidence, Mehta was dubious.
These complaints specifically have become a regular feature in the delays requested by Rhodes. But Mehta said the Justice Department has “bent over backward” to share materials and other records that would help him prepare.
The judge acknowledged that preparing for trial from prison is difficult but it was Rhodes, he said, who opted to hire lawyers located in Texas instead of Virginia where he is currently detained.
“That’s his decision,” Mehta said as he reiterated his skepticism.
He had not heard a ‘whiff of discontent” with Linder or Bright until Tuesday. And further, he questioned why Rhodes would seek to replace his lawyers based in Texas with a lawyer based in Louisiana.
Mehta ultimately eviscerated Rhodes’ complaints one by one, emphasizing how thin the premise was for each grievance.
In his late filing, Rhodes had argued as well that he needed to compel discovery from Ray Epps, a onetime Oath Keeper who has been at the center of a now long-debunked right-wing conspiracy theory suggesting FBI agents incited the insurrection.
Bright was clear with Mehta that if he were to represent Rhodes at trial, he had “no intention of even talking about Ray Epps in this case.”
"I am aware of who he is in the world of conspiracies that surround this case. He's a red herring and that is a wormhole, as a defense attorney, that I am not going to go down,” Bright said.
As for Tarpley’s role at trial, if Rhodes wants him there, Mehta said at this point, the most he would be willing to do is “make room for him at the table.”
“But that’s about as much as I’m willing to do,” Mehta said.
The judge also pushed back against allegations from Rhodes that the government was trying to hide testimony from witnesses he hoped to call at trial by indicting them. Those witnesses included former Oath Keepers general counsel Kellye SoRelle and Jan. 6 operations leader Michael Greene, aka Michael Simmons.
Mehta said “not a speck of a paper” had been filed about that until Tuesday. This raised concerns anew for the judge about Rhodes’ intentions.
The former Oath Keeper ringleader also asked that the court compel Congress to give over transcripts from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide to Mark Meadows.
Sounding impatient, Mehta said Hutchinson had no role whatsoever in Rhodes’ case and that he was not aware to what extent any conversations she overheard between former President Donald Trump and his personal attorney had relevance.
“The government has not alleged or asserted that the Oath Keepers coordinated with anybody at the White House or anyone within orbit of the [former] President of the United States,” Mehta said.
Jury selection is on track to begin soon and if Rhodes is to make any further requests about witnesses or complaints he has with access to discovery, he must issue them in writing and be specific. No one in this case, Mehta said, had yet to make a specific complaint about specific discovery they did not have access to.
Opening arguments kick off on Sept. 27.