Starting next week, Oath Keepers ringleader Elmer Stewart Rhodes and four fellow members of the far-right extremist network will finally go on trial to face charges accusing them of organizing a seditious conspiracy to forcefully stop the lawful transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.
The trial will unfold in Washington, D.C., before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta starting Sept. 27.
Also facing jurors alongside Rhodes will be Oath Keepers Thomas Caldwell of Virginia, Kelly Meggs and Kenneth Harrelson of Florida, and Jessica Watkins of Ohio. Judge Mehta has estimated that the trial will stretch for roughly five weeks and it is anticipated that a number of witnesses will be called forward including potentially, those Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty after being indicted on similar conspiracy charges last year.
Seditious conspiracy is a rarely brought charge in U.S. history and when it is, it is not often that prosecutors secure convictions.
The statute is worded broadly and the First Amendment is often a tricky barrier for prosecutors who must parse the subtle differences between a defendant’s speech, intent or, motivation and any possible criminality therein. Sedition is also a hugely significant charge to bring because of the political weight it carries: To charge someone with sedition is to say that they have completely disavowed—and sought to tear asunder—the nation’s most treasured and core founding principles of democracy.
The last conviction for seditious conspiracy was that of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Islamic extremist. In 1995, he and nine co-conspirators were found guilty of plotting attacks on federal buildings, historic landmarks, and military installations as well as a number of other serious crimes.
Before then, the last sedition conviction in the United States came in 1954, after Lolita Lebron and four Puerto Rican nationalist cohorts barged into the U.S. Capitol and started shooting.
The sentence for seditious conspiracy, or those who would plot to “overthrow, put down or destroy the U.S. government”, is a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Rhodes, Meggs, Harrelson, Caldwell, and Watkins not only face seditious conspiracy charges, but also various other charges, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties.
Rhodes is also charged with tampering and aiding and abetting. Rhodes has entered a not guilty plea and insists he did not enter the Capitol.
Meggs and Harrelson face additional charges, too, including destruction of government property and tampering. Watkins was indicted on all of the above plus civil disorder. Caldwell faced nearly all of the same charges as Rhodes, but managed to avoid the destruction of government property charge.
Prosecutors say Rhodes, a Yale Law school graduate and former Army paratrooper, started planning for Jan. 6 just two days after the 2020 election.
Trump had lost, but brayed nonetheless about a stolen election. Rhodes started an encrypted group chat on Signal, urged his fellow Oath Keepers not to lose hope, and ordered them to align themselves behind the outgoing president.
His messages reiterated how the election was “stolen.” He issued a call to action and dubbed it “What We the People Must Do.”
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, and spirit,” he wrote.
In the weeks ahead, Rhodes would hold teleconference calls or video calls with Oath Keepers Meggs, Harrelson, Watkins, and others. He outlined his plans to stop the peaceful transfer of power, recruited new Oath Keepers, and according to prosecutors, sent Caldwell on a reconnaissance mission to Washington. Just before Thanksgiving, Meggs, Harrelson, and other Oath Keepers even participated in battle training for “unconventional warfare.”
By December, prosecutors say Rhodes was turning up the violent rhetoric as the plan came together. On the same day electors were casting their votes—Dec. 14, 2020—Oath Keepers in Florida and North Carolina met to conduct ambush training.
By Christmas Eve, Oath Keepers in the nation’s Southeast were put on notice.
According to the indictment, Rhodes told a regional leader of the group at the time that if Biden were allowed into the White House, “we will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That’s what going to have to happen.”
Rhodes posted letters openly on the Oath Keepers website around the same time, announcing that “patriot Americans” would be in Washington on Jan. 6, a date he deemed to be the last possible deadline for Trump’s electors to be considered. Trump had also peddled this date for his “big” and “wild” protest.
In truth, that electors deadline would have come and gone by more than a week.
Court records allege the Oath Keeper founder went on a shopping spree around New Year's Eve, buying night vision devices and a weapon sight. He would mail them to Virginia, where they arrived on Jan. 4.
With less than a week to go until Jan. 6, there was a flutter of activity.
A base camp for Jan. 6 had been established at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, prosecutors say.
Three rooms were reserved: one for Oath Keepers from North Carolina, another for those from Arizona, and another for those from Florida. Each team was a “quick reaction force” (QRF), the indictment states.
The plan was simple: The quick reaction teams could send back-up into D.C., be it men or arms, at a moment’s notice. Those who stayed in Arlington would guard the weapons hauled into the hotel rooms unless directed otherwise.
Records show Rhodes spent $5,000 on firearms and ammunition between Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. Watkins allegedly started assigning roles to members of the team around the same time. Meggs shared a map with members in the Oath Keeper leadership chat. He marked off the QRF rallying points around the banks of the Potomac River.
They would get in by boat if the bridges were closed. They were getting into D.C.
And “if it all went to shit” on the ground once across the river, Caldwell wrote in a message on Jan. 2, they would have help from “our guys” to ferry them out.
By Jan. 3, Rhodes left his home in Granbury, Texas, and headed toward Washington. He dropped another $6,000 on firearms, sights, and triggers. He spent another $4,500 on weapons and equipment when passing through Mississippi. On the eve of the attack at the Capitol, prosecutors say Caldwell—already in Virginia—did one more reconnaissance mission of D.C.
On the morning of Jan. 6, roughly an hour before the sun came up, “operations leader Rhodes,” prosecutors said, left the hotel in Virginia and descended on the Capitol by car.
As Trump wrapped his speech at the Ellipse, prosecutors say Rhodes was impatiently sending messages to those in the encrypted leadership chat.
“All I see Trump doing is complaining,” Rhodes wrote at 1:38 PM. “I see no intent by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands. They’ve had enough.”
The leadership chat lit up with questions about what to do next. Rumors that members of the antifascist movement, or “antifa,” had infiltrated the riot were flying among them. Rhodes responded to a question from one Oath Keeper about whether there were people “in disguise as Patriots” there to “cause trouble.”
There were no interlopers, Rhodes would explain.
Just “actual patriots. Pissed off patriots. Like the Sons of Liberty were pissed off patriots,” he allegedly wrote.
Watkins and several others were on the march to the Capitol around the same time. In a series of Zello chats, Watkins told her comrades: “It has spread like wildfire that [then-Vice President Mike] Pence has betrayed us and everybody’s marching on the Capitol. We have about 30-40 of us. We are sticking together and sticking to the plan.”
Notably, Watkins tried to have this message in the Zello chat removed from admissible evidence at trial. She argued this week that it was hearsay and not indicative of her state of mind. Judge Mehta disagreed and denied the request in part. Though that message would stay in for jurors, other messages will not. Those omitted included some Mehta deemed overly inflammatory and may prejudice jurors.
The Obama appointee said some of the messages excluded did not appear to have an “immediate effect” on Watkins’ conduct or decision-making by that point in the riot.
Other messages from other users in the Oath Keeper’s Zello chat would be excluded if they were made by people not named in the case, Mehta said.
He did make an exception, however, as prosecutors fought to keep all of the Zello texts in evidence.
Prosecutors have pointed out that one of the users talking to Watkins, the user “FreedomD0z3r91,” is an unindicted co-conspirator.
Mehta agreed to keep a message from FreedomD0z3r91 to Watkins sent in the thick of the attack that read: “Get it Jess. Do your shit. This is what we fucking lived up for. Everything we fucking trained for.”
Once the siege was underway, the indictment states that the Oath Keepers split themselves into two military stack formations once inside the Capitol. Prosecutors say one stack went searching specifically for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Pushing past police, Meggs, Harrelson, Watkins, and other Oath Keepers who will face trial later this year breached the complex and moved into the Capitol Rotunda. The first stack marched into the Senate chamber and prosecutors say it was there that Watkins called on everyone around her to “push, push, push.”
“They can’t hold us,” Watkins allegedly screamed.
Police wielding chemical spray repelled the first stack from the Senate. The group then went in search of Pelosi in the House to no avail. She, like Pence and other lawmakers, was narrowly whisked away to safety.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say Caldwell, a retired lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy who has previously denied his ties to the Oath Keepers, was storming barricades at the Capitol’s west flank. He scrambled up a balcony and got into a restricted zone.
A second stack of Oath Keepers would eventually be joined by Joshua James, Roberto Minuta, and Brian Ulrich. Both James and Ulrich pleaded guilty and ultimately flipped on Rhodes and their former compatriots earlier this year.
Court records allege that the second stack of Oath Keepers taunted police as they entered the Capitol and then started grabbing them and pushing them while screaming “This is my fucking building! This is not yours!” and “Keep going!”
Prosecutors say by 3:30 PM on Jan. 6, Rhodes had instructed his leaders “not tasked with a security detail”—Joshua James admitted to prosecutors that he provided security to Trump ally Roger Stone ahead of the attack— to reconvene.
That night, the plot continued, the indictment states.
Rhodes, James, and fellow Oath Keeper Robert Vallejo met at an Olive Garden in Virginia to celebrate their achievements. But the work wasn’t done. Rhodes wrote to those in the Signal leadership group: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming,” he added. [Emphasis original]
The plan to stop the transfer of power was not limited to the alleged conduct before or on Jan. 6, alone. The plot extended well beyond that and prosecutors say the records seized from Oath Keepers show that.
To wit, in one message from Watkins where a possible gameplan for Jan. 20—Biden’s inauguration—was being discussed, the Ohio division leader said there were “something like 20+ Oath Keepers going to Kentucky mountains on hundreds of acres apparently.”
Rhodes used the time between the 6th and Jan. 20 to purchase more weapons and equipment. Court records suggest he spent nearly $20,000 between Jan. 10 and Jan. 19 on scopes, magazines, ammunition, sights, gun grips, holsters, and other related items.
He has defended the gun and related purchases as lawful and contends that his rhetoric before, during, and after the attack may have been unsavory but it was still protected speech.
After previous attempts to delay the start of this trial, Rhodes made a last-ditch attempt to waylay proceedings this month but was unsuccessful. He has been imprisoned since his arrest and is currently detained in Virginia. Rhodes has argued that preparation for his trial has been prohibitive.
RELATED STORY: Delay trial, suppress evidence and appoint a special master Oath Keeper Rhodes begs judge
He nearly divorced himself completely from his lawyers, Philip Linder and James Bright, this month, making thin claims of prosecutorial misconduct. Rhodes brought in a third attorney, Ed Tarpley, to assist but with Tarpley coming to the table so late, Mehta encouraged Bright and Linder to stay on. They did.
Meanwhile, Tarpley has received assistance prepping for trial from a lawyer in the shadows with former ties to white supremacists, Politico reported.
A second group of Oath Keepers charged alongside Rhodes in the initial indictment will go to trial on Nov. 29. The defendants were split up earlier this year due to logistical concerns. The federal courthouse in D.C. simply did not have the space to accommodate all of the Oath Keepers, their attorneys, the prosecution, potential witnesses, and jurors.
RELATED STORY: Oath Keeper attorney Kellye SoRelle arrested in Texas, charged with obstruction