Oath Keepers Founder Convicted of Sedition in Capitol Attack – Mother Jones

A jury has convicted Stewart Rhodes, the founding father of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, of seditious conspiracy and different crimes, a milestone within the Justice Division’s sprawling investigation into the January 6 assault on Congress. Jurors additionally convicted Kelly Meggs, the chief of the group’s Florida chapter, of seditious conspiracy.

However the identical jury acquitted three different defendants on sedition costs. Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell had been discovered not responsible on that rely, which carries a sentence of as much as 20 years imprisonment. The jury additionally acquitted Rhodes, Harrelson, and Caldwell of conspiring to impede an official continuing. All of the defendants had been convicted of obstructing an official continuing, which additionally carries a sentence of as much as 20 years in jail.

Whereas combined, the result affirms that the riot concerned an try and violently overthrow the US authorities. The verdicts, which comply with a marathon eight-week trial, are essentially the most vital convictions to this point in what the Justice Division has known as the biggest prison investigation in American historical past, with practically 1,000 folks dealing with numerous costs associated to January 6. 

The combined verdicts could replicate a conclusion by the jury that Rhodes and Meggs performed management roles within the assault. The jurors, although they deliberated for only a three days, seem to have parsed the proof towards particular person defendants, judging that the case was weaker towards Caldwell, who didn’t enter the Capitol; Harrelson, towards whom prosecutors admitted they’d much less proof of conspiracy; and Watkins, whose emotional admission of wrongdoing on the stand could have been persuasive.

Three members of the Oath Keepers and one Proud Boys member had already pleaded responsible to seditious conspiracy costs. However Tuesday’s outcome marked the primary jury trial to end in a sedition verdict because the 1995 convictions of 10 Islamic terrorists— together with the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman—who plotted to explode New York Metropolis landmarks.

Lower than a 12 months in the past, Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland confronted assaults from the left amid concern that the DOJ wouldn’t cost anybody with sedition. Federal prosecutors have since indicted 11 Oath Keepers with that crime—a second Oath Keepers trial is ready to begin in December. 5 leaders of the far-right Proud Boys are set to go on trial for seditious conspiracy and different costs subsequent month. Garland additionally not too long ago named a particular counsel, Jack Smith, to supervise the division’s separate investigation into whether or not former President Donald Trump and aides will face costs associated to their efforts to make use of false claims of election fraud to retain energy after Trump’s 2020 defeat. That investigation seems to be advancing, although it stays unclear if it can end in costs.

Prosecutors had a heap of proof towards the Oath Keeper defendants. Throughout the trial, they confirmed that Rhodes and allies in his group started discussing the potential use of violence to assist Trump maintain onto energy as quickly as media shops reported that Joe Biden had defeated him. “We aren’t getting by way of this with out a civil struggle,” Rhodes wrote in an Oath Keepers chat two days after the election. “Put together your thoughts physique and spirit.”

As Mom Jones first detailed, some Oath Keepers, together with Harrelson and Meggs, engaged in what prosecutors known as paramilitary coaching within the fall of 2020. Group members plotted to convey weapons to the Washington, DC, space on January 6 and stashed them in resort rooms with guards as a part of a plan to deploy a “fast response drive” if the road violence they anticipated broke out. Meggs, Harrelson, and Watkins stormed the Capitol together with different Oath Keepers on January 6, and prosecutors cited messages displaying that Rhodes and Caldwell celebrated their actions.

However the authorities’s case had one massive weak point. Prosecutors lacked proof that the Oath Keepers ever had a transparent plan to invade the Capitol earlier than they did so. Legal professionals for the Oath Keepers tried to take advantage of that truth, arguing the defendants had come to Washington to offer safety at rallies supporting Trump resulting from their concern of assaults by antifa, or simply to look at the president’s speech earlier that day. Protection attorneys additionally argued that the Oath Keepers solely deliberate to take up arms if Trump deputized them beneath the Revolt Act, a legislation permitting the president to reply to uprisings.

“There was no assembly of the minds to conspire,” James Shiny, a lawyer for Rhodes, mentioned in his closing assertion. “There was no plan.” Which will have been the Oath Keepers’ greatest argument. However the issue with it was that prosecutors didn’t must show the defendants had conspired to storm Congress.

To point out prison conspiracy, the federal government solely wanted to display that the defendants had a “mutual understanding” that they might attempt to cease Biden from taking workplace. One key witness, Graydon Younger, an Oath Keeper who cooperated with prosecutors, testified that the Oath Keepers had an “implicit” understanding that they might attempt to assist Trump retain energy.

“I felt prefer it was commonsense,” Younger mentioned on the stand final month. “We talked about doing one thing about fraud within the election after we received there on the sixth, and when crowds went over the barricades into the constructing, the chance introduced itself to do one thing.”

This was an issue for Rhodes and Meggs. Given the possibility to show their alleged preparations for violence into motion, they seized it. “We took the citadel,” Meggs advised Watkins on January 6, in response to Watkins’ testimony on the trial. “Now we’re standing our floor.” Protection attorneys argued that Oath Keepers’ discuss civil struggle, their stockpiling of weapons, and their journey to Washington had been all incidental to the assault on Congress, which they depicted as spontaneous. However the Oath Keepers’ rhetoric appeared to converge with their actions on January 6.

Rhodes didn’t enter the Capitol on January 6. However Rhodes—who has assiduously promoted the Oath Keepers, aligning the group with numerous far-right causes since launching it within the wake Barack Obama’s election—could have carried out essentially the most to sink himself along with his personal statements. “Subsequent comes our Lexington,” Rhodes advised colleagues within the wake of the riot on January 6, in a Revolutionary Warfare reference that prompt he hoped the violence would escalate.

“My solely remorse is that they need to have introduced rifles,” Rhodes advised an affiliate, who secretly recorded him, a couple of days after the assault.

Rhodes’ phrases additionally undermined Oath Keepers’ declare that they solely deliberate violence if Trump invoked the Revolt Act, seeming to confess it was a facade. In a recording from a web-based assembly in November 2020, which prosecutors obtained, Rhodes advised group members that stance was “our official place.” He added: “The explanation why we now have to do it that means is as a result of that offers you authorized cowl.”

Sentencing within the case will not be but scheduled, however is unlikely to happen sooner than March.