UPDATE: Wednesday, Nov 30, 2022 · 2:33:00 AM +00:00
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Brandi Buchman
It should be noted that after the verdicts were announced on Tuesday an attorney for Rhodes, James Lee Bright, spoke to reporters and offered graceful remarks about the case and U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.
“The government did good,” Bright said. “They took us to task.”
Though he was disappointed with the mixed bag of verdicts and posited that a different venue may have benefited the case, he added: “I do believe it was a fair trial.”
UPDATE: Wednesday, Nov 30, 2022 · 1:14:40 AM +00:00 · Brandi Buchman
UPDATE:
Though defendants Caldwell, Watkins, and Harrelson were spared the seditious conspiracy charge by the jury, their failure to escape the obstruction of an official proceeding charge is significant. This charge, like the seditious conspiracy charge, carries a maximum 20-year sentence in prison.
For all of the charges he was convicted on, Rhodes faces a max sentence of up to 60 years in prison. Meggs faces up to 86 years in prison. As for Watkins, she could serve up to 56 years in prison if the judge doles out the steepest sentence possible for all of her charges. Caldwell is looking at 40 years and Harrelson could be sentenced up to 46 years for all of the charges he was convicted on. Sentencing guidelines are only recommendations and it could end up that the defendants receive shorter terms than the ones recommended.
All of the defendants will remain jailed except for Thomas Caldwell until sentencing. Caldwell was released from prison well ahead of the trial, citing various health concerns. An attorney for Jessica Watkins asked the judge after the verdict was read if his client could potentially be released ahead of sentencing, but Mehta denied the request from the bench.
The success of the seditious conspiracy conviction is the first one the Justice Department has had in more than a decade. The charge was also the steepest one brought against any defendant tied to Jan. 6 thus far.
It is important to note the subtle difference in charges the defendants mutually faced and in particular, conspiracy to obstruct versus obstruction.
Rhodes was acquitted of conspiracy to obstruct. He was also acquitted of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties. Though he never entered the Capitol, prosecutors emphasized that in the moments just before Oath Keepers breached the building, Rhodes called Meggs as well as Michael Greene aka “Whip,” a man he selected to serve as his “Jan 6 ops” leader.
What was said on that call was not revealed at trial and the contents of it will remain a mystery short of an admission of the details from Rhodes, Greene, or Meggs.
Phone records offered up by prosecutors showed the conference call was patched through despite Rhodes' claim from the witness stand that it did not.
Greene, who was charged separately from Rhodes, currently faces five charges including conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiring to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, entering a restricted building or grounds, and tampering with documents or proceedings.
Greene, who also goes by Michael Simmons, opted to waive his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in order to testify on Rhodes’ behalf. The former Blackwater contractor’s testimony under direct examination flowed easily but once under cross-examination, his account of the events of Jan. 6 started to fray fast at the edges.
Jurors did not take questions after the marathon trial officially ended on Tuesday. They went straight home instead, so learning exactly how they may have reached their decision will have to wait.
Only three defendants, Rhodes, Watkins, and Caldwell, testified on their own behalf.
Caldwell’s testimony, like Rhodes’, was rife with contradictions and he frequently became emotional on the stand, at one point appearing to sob abruptly as he recounted the day the FBI showed up at his home in rural Virginia and ordered him and his wife to come outside.
Prosecutors said Caldwell was instrumental in coordinating a “quick reaction force” at a hotel in northern Virginia, just minutes from D.C., where Oath Keepers from multiple states including Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona convened in the days before the insurrection.
The “QRF” was packed with weapons that were rolled into the hotel on dollies, in many cases, and in large bins. At least one rifle brought to the hotel was only haphazardly covered with fabric, making its outline recognizable. Oath Keeper Terry Cummings told jurors in October there were more firearms in the QRF than any he had seen since his time serving in the U.S. military.
Caldwell stayed at the QRF hotel on the morning of Jan. 6, and met with Oath Keepers as they gathered for Trump’s insurrection-inciting speech at the Ellipse.
Despite his age and history of back injuries—he was 65 on Jan. 6—video and photo evidence showed Caldwell made it all the way up to the top of the inaugural platform erected at the Capitol. He steadfastly denied seeing any evidence of violence though he was less than 50 yards away, at one point, from the lower west terrace tunnel where police officers were viciously attacked with their own riot shields as well as fire extinguishers, chemical sprays, and the mob’s bare fists. His attorney David Fischer argued Caldwell was unable to see the violence in the tunnel from his vantage point.
“January 6 happened and I had nothing to do with it,” Caldwell testified.
Though he was acquitted of the sedition charge, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, he was unable to escape the obstruction of an official proceeding charge or the tampering charge.
Jurors saw extensive evidence of Caldwell’s efforts to cover his tracks after the Capitol siege. He deleted nearly 180 Facebook messages tied to Jan. 6 and did so on Jan. 14.
Metadata showed the messages he deleted on Jan. 14 were sent on Jan. 7.
Prosecutors emphasized to jurors that Caldwell wiped his correspondence on the same day he accessed a New Yorker article naming Jessica Watkins and Oath Keeper Donovan Crowl as participants in the riot.
The Oath Keepers insisted their efforts in the run-up to Jan. 6 were purely about providing “security” for Trump allies like Roger Stone and “Stop the Steal” event organizer and conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander. Stone, evidence showed, was part of at least one text group on Signal shared between members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
But other evidence like a secret recording of Rhodes captured four days after the insurrection by Jason Alpers, a military veteran who said he had indirect ties to Trump, showed the Oath Keeper leader was still intent on stopping the transfer of power.
In the recording, Rhodes plainly stated his regret about failing to bring rifles into Washington on Jan. 6. Rhodes also typed a letter to Trump into Alpers’ phone during the meeting and asked him to pass it to the 45th president.
It was too extreme and he never shared it with Trump, Alpers testified.
Another batch of Oath Keepers will go on trial in December for seditious conspiracy including David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Ed Vallejo, and Roberto Minuta.
Members of the neofascist Proud Boys, including leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, go on trial for seditious conspiracy in December.
For their attempt to stop the nation’s peaceful transfer of power by force on Jan. 6, 2021, a jury has found the leader of the extremist Oath Keepers organization Elmer Stewart Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs guilty.
Co-defendants Jessica Watkins, Thomas Caldwell, and Kenneth Harrelson were found not guilty on the seditious conspiracy charge.
The charge of seditious conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. It will likely be many months before the parties are sentenced, and presiding U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta did not set a date for sentencing after the verdicts were read for each defendant, count by count.
Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, not guilty of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties, and guilty of tampering with documents.
Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties, and tampering with documents. Meggs was found not guilty of the destruction of government property.
Ohio Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, just one of the Oath Keepers who breached the U.S. Capitol in an organized stack, was found not of guilty seditious conspiracy but was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding. She was also found guilty of conspiring to prevent officers from discharging their duties, and civil disorder. Those two verdicts were expected after Watkins admitted to civil disorder from the witness stand at trial. On the destruction of government property charge, she was found not guilty.
Thomas Caldwell, a former Naval commander—who prosecutors said coordinated the groups’ efforts to establish a heavily-armed quick reaction force, or QRF, to support Oath Keepers on the ground at the Capitol—was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy, not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, not guilty of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties, but guilty on two charges: tampering with documents and obstruction of an official proceeding.
Kenneth Harrelson, another Oath Keepers leader from Florida who joined the stack breaching the Capitol, was found not guilty of seditious conspiracy, not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and not guilty of destruction of property. He was, however, found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties.
Elmer Stewart Rhodes was arrested on Jan. 13, a little more than a year from the day that he stood outside of the U.S. Capitol, stalking from side to side of the building as the pro-Trump mob swelled and members of the group he founded in 2009 stormed the building with the aim of stopping the certification of the 2020 election.
At trial, Rhodes denied having a specific plan in place for Jan. 6, citing the lack of a written or express agreement to halt the certification. This point made up the lion’s share of the defense, and it was often that Oath Keepers would claim they were simply “swept up” by a jostling, fast-moving crowd.
Even from the witness stand, Oath Keepers who had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, like Jason Dolan and Graydon Young, testified that there was never an explicit plan about using force to stop Congress.
It was, however, “implied,” Young said.
And this, according to prosecutors, is what mattered to secure the seditious conspiracy convictions.
An explicit agreement was never required for the jury to find the defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy. An implied agreement was indicated in myriad Oath Keepers texts, video, and audio recordings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said during the government’s final rebuttal on Nov. 21.
Rhodes alone published two open letters to former President Donald Trump in December 2020, urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act so that Oath Keepers could be called up to stop what Rhodes believed was a “deep state” coup aimed at removing Trump from the White House despite his popular and electoral defeat—the long and now widely debunked “Big Lie”—to now-President Joe Biden.
If Trump didn’t act, Rhodes wrote, the Oath Keepers would be forced to. A civil war would be inevitable.
”You must act NOW as a wartime President, pursuant to your oath to defend the Constitution, which is very similar to the oath all of us veterans swore. We are already in a fight. It’s better to wage it with you as Commander-in-Chief than to have you comply with a fraudulent election, leave office, and leave the White House in the hands of illegitimate usurpers and Chinese puppets,” Rhodes wrote in an open letter to Trump published on the Oath Keepers website on Dec. 14.
“Do NOT concede, and do NOT wait until Jan. 20, 2021. Strike now. If you fail to act while you are still in office, we the people will have to fight a bloody civil war and revolution against these two illegitimate Communist China puppets, and their illegitimate regime, with all of the powers of the deep state behind them, with nominal command of all the might of our armed forces (though we fully expect many units or entire branches to refuse their orders and to fight against them) and with their foreign allies also joining to assist in the impression of American patriots.” [Emphasis original]
The seditious missives didn’t stop there.
In a second open letter—published four days after Trump tweeted an invitation to the “big protest in D.C.” on Jan. 6—Rhodes’ frustration reached a fever pitch as he again urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Stewart Rhodes’ second open letter to Trump urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act so he could stay in power despite handily losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
When he testified before the jury, Rhodes was unrepentant in his view that the 2020 election was “unconstitutional,” pointing to COVID-19 protocols implemented in battleground states during the pandemic. Under cross-examination from Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy, he also bizarrely denied his letters were intended to convince Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use a militia of Oath Keepers and other allies to overturn the election results.
He admitted to urging his followers to oppose the results but then denied urging them to use force. Text messages seized off of his device, however, showed Rhodes explicitly stating: “The answer must be to refuse to accept, acknowledge or respect or obey any of these imposters or their pretend legislation and get gear squared away and ready to fight,” and, “Trump has one last chance right now to stand but he will need us and our rifles too."
During the trial, any argument by the defense that the Oath Keepers failed to participate in a seditious conspiracy simply because there was not a definitive, spelled-out plan amounted to a “colossal waste of time,” Nestler said.
“Let me be clear on behalf of the United States: We do not allege a specific plan to storm the Capitol. Never have. Aren't now. We don't have to prove a plan,” he said.
Jurors only needed to find evidence of a mutual understanding. Conspirators rarely put their plans in writing—a feature U.S. criminal law healthily accounts for. No oral agreement was required, nor was there a requirement that the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all conspirators were aware of every detail of a conspiracy, or even agreed to the means of the conspiracy.
The coordination to halt the nation’s transfer of presidential power played out over phone calls and texts among Rhodes and several of the group’s senior-most leaders in various states, including his co-defendant Kelly Meggs of Florida.
Justice Department demonstrative showing the chain of command for Oath Keepers on Jan. 6
Evidence amassed by prosecutors showed Meggs not only reserved a hotel in November 2020 for a weapons training course but was joined in that reservation by fellow Oath Keepers Jeremy Brown and Joseph Hackett. Brown brought an RV to the Washington, D.C., area on Jan. 6, allegedly stuffed with explosives. He left the vehicle in College Park, Maryland, roughly a half hour’s commute without traffic from D.C. Brown has not yet gone to trial; an update in his case is expected before Dec. 19.
Hackett, like Meggs, was one of the Oath Keepers who stormed the Capitol in a stack formation on Jan. 6. He goes on trial for seditious conspiracy starting Dec. 5, along with Oath Keepers Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel, and Ed Vallejo. All were charged alongside Rhodes, but due to the limited space available to accommodate the large number of defendants and their attorneys, plus the government’s attorneys at the federal courthouse, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta split the defendants into two groups.
This story is developing.
