U.S. In Oath Keepers Trial Outlines Alleged Plotting Before Capitol Attack The Washington Post
U.S. In Oath Keepers Trial Outlines Alleged Plotting Before Capitol Attack – The Washington Post https://dentoncountynewsonline.com/u-s-in-oath-keepers-trial-outlines-alleged-plotting-before-capitol-attack-the-washington-post/
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Updated October 3, 2022 at 7:36 p.m. EDT|Published
October 3, 2022 at 10:17 a.m. EDT
Opening statements and trial testimony started Monday for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other members of the extremist group who face seditious conspiracy and other charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Rhodes and four co-defendants — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — have pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging that they conspired for weeks after the 2020 presidential election to unleash political violence to oppose the lawful transfer of power to Joe Biden.
The defendants came from Texas, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, and allegedly led a group that traveled to Washington and staged firearms nearby before forcing entry through the Capitol Rotunda doors in combat and tactical gear.
Day 2 of testimony in the Oath Keepers trial will resume Tuesday
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The Washington Post’s live coverage of opening statements and the first day of testimony in the seditious conspiracy trial of Stewart Rhodes and other Oath Keepers affiliates has ended for today.
Read a recap of Monday’s coverage here.
Stewart Rhodes messaged Roger Stone on Nov. 7, 2020: ‘We need to roll’
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On the day news networks declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes sent a message to a group chat that included longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone.
“What’s the plan?” he asked. “We need to roll.” He added, “I’m on my way to DC Right now, with my Oath Keepers tactical leaders for a possible DC op, to do a leaders recon and make plans. I’m available to meet face to face.”
He also shared a video comparing the U.S. election in 2020 to the election of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, with advice for those contesting the results. One of the points Rhodes highlighted was, “We swarmed the streets and started confronting the opponents.” Another: “We stormed the Parliament.”
Rhodes discussed resisting election results within hours, messages show
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The first witness in the Oath Keepers trial, FBI Special Agent Michael Palian, displayed a number of messages sent by the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, to other people beginning early on Nov. 4, 2020, urging them to resist the result of the presidential election. He said “the left, including the Democratic Party … seek our destruction. We must defeat them. … Even if one of them occupies the White House.”
Palian said the FBI extracted numerous messages from Rhodes’s phone that he sent on Signal, an encrypted messaging app. The government is attempting to show that Rhodes began plotting for Jan. 6, 2021, within hours of the election ending on Nov. 3, 2020, even though no one had called the result of the election then. Some of the messages have not previously been made public.
These 7 Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to Jan. 6 conspiracy charges
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Three Oath Keepers members have already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, and four others to conspiring to obstruct Congress’s confirmation of the presidential vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
Joshua James, 34, of Arab, Ala., and Brian Ullrich, 44, of Guyton, Ga., were charged with seditious conspiracy with Stewart Rhodes. William Todd Wilson, 45, of Newton Grove, N.C., was charged separately. All are cooperating with U.S. prosecutors.
In plea papers, James said that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes “instructed [him] and others to be prepared and called upon to … use lethal force if necessary” to keep Trump in office. After Jan. 6, James said he spent several weeks with Rhodes in Texas, where he said they gathered weapons, burner phones and tactical gear, then returned to Alabama where he “awaited Rhodes’s instructions,” according to his plea.
FBI agent investigating Oath Keepers guarded crying senators on Jan. 6
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On Jan. 6, 2021, FBI special agent Michael Palian was working from home on a health-care fraud squad, he testified as the first witness at the trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four others.
Palian was called to the Capitol at 3:30 p.m. that day and was eventually asked to go to the undisclosed location nearby where U.S. senators had relocated.
“It was chaotic,” he said. The senators were in “shock,” he said, and some were crying. At 7:30 p.m., he and about 70 other FBI agents walked the senators back to the Capitol building and into the Senate chamber.
Two defendants defer opening statements; testimony to start
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After attorneys for Stewart Rhodes, Thomas Caldwell and Jessica Watkins made their opening statements Monday, attorneys for two defendants — Kelly Meggs and Kenneth Harrelson — chose to defer their case introductions to the jury. So prosecutors are now readying their first witness of the trial.
Defense lawyers have the option of giving their opening statement immediately after the prosecution has given its statement, or at the outset of the defense case. Defense lawyers are of varying opinions on whether to lay out the defense before the prosecutors start or after they’ve finished. Some believe it is best to get the defense side in before evidence is presented. Some believe it’s better to respond to that evidence after the jury has heard it.
Ohio bar owner was a ‘protest junkie’ just ‘there to help,’ lawyer says
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The lawyer for Jessica Watkins, the Ohio bar owner who is accused of leading one of the assaults on the Capitol on Jan. 6, said she became involved with the Oath Keepers out of her compulsion to protect people and had no role in planning for any attack on the Capitol.
Watkins had served in the Army but was discharged early, then served as a firefighter, her attorney Jonathan Crisp said. She started the Ohio State Regular Militia, Crisp said, because “she was a protest junkie. She wanted to go to protests and help law enforcement. She was a medic, she was there to help. She followed protest to protest to protest, that was her thing.”
Who is Stewart Rhodes, what has he said about Jan. 6 and why does he wear an eye patch?
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Would-be paramilitary commander or couch-surfing grifter? Stewart Rhodes has been described as both and more as he has risen to become one of the most visible leaders of the right-wing “Patriot/militia” movement.
A former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate, Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 with the what he said was the mission of preventing a “full-blown totalitarian dictatorship,” and drawn recruits from the military and law enforcement. In practice, analysts say, it is a collection of local chapters with a similar, disinformation-fueled ideology about what they view as the inevitable collapse of the U.S. government into tyranny.
Attorney for Virginia defendant points blame at FBI
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The attorney for Thomas Caldwell, a 68-year-old Berryville, Va., defendant accused of organizing a “Quick Reaction Force” for the Oath Keepers on Jan. 6, used much of his opening statement to accuse the FBI of incompetence and overreach.
“It’s an absolute outrage,” David Fischer said. “I’m begging you to clear his name.”
Fischer said investigators “spared no expense” yet repeatedly fumbled. He said that they initially believed that Caldwell had gone into the building when he hadn’t, that they got his age and eye color wrong, and that they didn’t know he had actually briefly worked for the FBI. They thought he was a commander in the Oath Keepers because other associates called him that, but it was actually a reference to his military service, Fischer said.
Oath Keepers often staged armed ‘quick reaction forces’ outside rallies, lawyer says
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As the lawyer for defendant Thomas E. Caldwell began his opening statement Monday, he said that the Oath Keepers regularly used “quick reaction forces” with multiple weapons as a contingency for rallies they protected in recent years.
The government has alleged that Caldwell, a Virginia resident, helped coordinate the gathering of guns and ammunition for a “quick reaction force” across the river from D.C., to be summoned as part of the effort to stop the congressional certification of the electoral college vote. Caldwell’s attorney, David Fischer, emphasized to the jury that, “the verb is to react, it’s not to act. Anybody who has served five seconds in the United States military knows that a quick reaction force or quick response team reacts to emergency situation. It’s a ‘break the glass in case of emergency’ group of people, typically EMTs or other medical personnel, to come in as a rescue unit. By definition a QRF would not be used to attack anything, including the United States Capitol.”
Why does Rhodes invoke Insurrection Act as defense for Jan. 6 planning?
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Stewart Rhodes has pleaded not guilty to seditious conspiracy, saying his co-defendants’ planning and actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol were defensive, taken in anticipation of what they believed would be a lawful order from then President Donald Trump deputizing militias under the Insurrection Act to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.
But why is Rhodes using an obscure, rarely used statute designed to protect the country from insurrection allegedly to support an actual insurrection?
Rhodes plans to testify, denies call to Trump: defense lawyer
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The closest the Justice Department has come to tying Donald Trump directly to extremists involved in the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol is the allegation that on the evening of Jan. 6, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes ca...