The Rhodes Insurrection Act: Trump or his Oath Keepers? Defense vs Attorney Linder: A case study of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol
The defense attorneys for Rhodes have argued that their actions were in preparation for Trump’s Insurrection Act and that the Oath Keepers did not call for armed reinforcements because they didn’t know Trump would invoke the act.
The Justice Department’s opening statement featured messages and other communications among the defendants that prosecutors say show the Oath Keepers’ unlawful plotting to disrupt Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral win. The Oath Keepers were captured in the Capitol and video was played to help the jury understand their actions. Each juror has their own screen to see evidence.
The transfer of power is a core democratic custom that has been going back to the time of George Washington.
Rhodes and four other defendants are charged with seditious conspiracy in the most serious criminal case yet to stem from the siege on the seat of government. Prosecutors have presented hundreds of text messages and witnesses who tied the defendants to sometimes violent rhetoric about keeping former President Donald Trump in power.
“They said out loud and in writing what they planned to do,” Jeffrey Nestler, an assistant US Attorney, told the jury. “When the opportunity finally presented itself … they sprang into action.”
Rhodes attorney Linder told the jurors that they will see evidence that will show that defendants “had no part in the bulk” of the violence that occurred on January 6.
“You may not like what you see and hear our defendants did,” attorney Phillip Linder said, “but the evidence will show that they didn’t do anything illegal that day.”
The opening statement of the Justice Department accused the defendants of taking up arms against the US government and attempting to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power.
As the video clips played, the jury saw a map of the Capitol, which was used by the defense to make their case. Nestler also had a physical chart, perched on an easel in the courtroom, listing out the alleged co-conspirators.
The prosecutor was able to identify the defendants and other alleged co-conspirators by using iPhone footage from the attack. When the video showed Kelly Meggs, the patch he wore said “I’m just here for the violence.”
Oath Keepers vs Justice Department: Why the Insurrection Act was not violated at the First Lady’s House of Representatives
Lawyers for the group and witnesses have said that at both events the Oath Keepers used military and law enforcement training to set up channels of communication. They had armed rapid reaction forces positioned outside of Washington that were prepared to help their associates if things got out of hand.
The opening arguments showed how the Justice Department will respond to the Oath Keepers’ defense.
“Even being bad security guards isn’t itself illegal.” “We talked about it.” Samuel said. However, according to the prosecutor, the goal they were actually preparing for was “unlawful.”
“President Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act,” Nestler said. The defendants needed to take charge of their own affairs. They needed to put into motion the plan they had agreed on.
Nestler, Caldwell, Meggs, Rhodes, the Oath Keepers, and the Prosecutors: An Accusation Against Rhodes
The Justice Department also emphasized the backgrounds of some of the defendants and how that fit into the department’s theory of the case. Rhodes, as Nestler repeatedly noted, is a graduate of Yale Law school. He told his co-conspirators to be careful with their words, as he knew to be careful with his.
Thomas Caldwell, another defendant, served in the military, Nestler said. “Based on that water experience, he planned to use boats to get across the Potomac.”
According to prosecutors, in December 2020, Rhodes told other people that if Donald Trump didn’t stop the election, they would have to do it on their own.
“With time, as their options dwindled and it became more and more likely that power would be transferred,” Nestler said Monday, “these defendants became more and more desperate and more and more focused on that date that Rhodes referred to as a constitutional deadline.”
The Oath Keepers were accused of packing guns at a hotel just outside Washington, D.C., to be used if needed to speed into the city on January 6.
The defendants were alleged to have used “stack” formations to enter the Capitol. He showed a video of Jessica Watkins pushing against a crowd outside the House chamber. Get in there, they can’t hold us.”
On Jan. 6 itself, Mr. Meggs was part of a military-style “stack” that entered the east side of the Capitol and, according to prosecutors, moved through the Rotunda toward the House of Representatives in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Should Mr. Rhodes testify at the trial, as expected, he is likely to say that Mr. Meggs went “off mission” by going into the building and that he did so without instructions from any Oath Keepers leaders.
The defendants saw the violation as a success, first of all, and said they were proud. The defendants were instructed to leave town, destroy their communication, and keep quiet when they realized they were in legal jeopardy.
Even with their criminal exposure, Nestler said, Rhodes continued to plot. On January 10, Rhodes went to Texas to try to get a message from former President Trump. The meeting, which had not previously been reported, was secretly recorded by an attendee.
We could have fixed it right then and there if they had brought rifles. The Justice Department opening states that Rhodes said on January 6.
He said the Justice Department will present gaps in evidence to the jury. He said that, once the prosecutors put on their case, the defense will fill in those gaps.
At one point during his opening the defense attorney was told to avoid topics that had been ruled out of bounds by the judge for the trial and that he was brought up to the bench for a private discussion.
There were off-limits topics brought up by Linder that caused the interventions, among them comments about the amount of prison time the charges bring, remarks about defendants sitting in jail, and details about the Insurrection Act.
“The real evidence is going to show you that our clients were there to do security for events for the 5th and the 6th,” Linder said, while calling his client a “extremely patriotic” and a “constitutional expert.”
“Stewart Rhodes meant no harm to the Capitol that day,” Linder said, as he described some of the rhetoric among the defendants “free speech and bravado.”
Linder said that Rhodes is planning to testify in his own defense to explain what he believed would happen on January 6. William Todd Wilson, an Oath Keeper, is also expected to testify during the trial. Linder said that he intends to ask Wilson about his plea agreement, including an allegation that Wilson witnessed Rhodes attempt to contact Trump on the evening of January 6.
The attorney for Caldwell zeroed in on what the Justice Department was saying about Caldwell organizing the Quick Reaction Force that day.
He explained that aQRF is a broken glass emergency team, meaning that they are organized to respond to emergency situations.
Rhodes told the jury that the Oath Keepers responded to an emergency at an event and set up the QRF units to respond if they were ever injured.
The seditious conspiracy charge from DOJ addresses agreements to hinder the government’s ability to conduct its business, and Fischer previewed for the jury a defense that would argue that the Justice Department had not proven Caldwell organized the QRF with that goal in mind.
The FBI’s investigation into the client, Caldwell and his wife, was called an “absolute outrage” by the agent who spoke to him. Fischer said that the Facebook messages the FBI used to justify Caldwell’s arrest were actually lines from the movie “The Princess Bride.”
“There was some other powerful evidence … the agent had an issue with a Facebook message that said … ‘I’m such an instigator’ … he also said ‘storming the castle,’” Fischer said.
Jonathan Crisp, an attorney for Watkins, made similar assertions about the QRF, and he told the jury that the Justice Department’s case against his client was missing context in other respects.
“The Zello chats sound incredibly damming if you listen to them in a vacuum,” he said, while suggesting to the jury that his client did not hear a lot of what was said on the walkie talkie application through the noise of the riot. He pointed out that she tried to get in touch with the FBI.
The first prosecution witness in the Capitol: Michael Palian hid in the chaos, and the jury was unsure what to do next-to-leading order
The first prosecution witness, FBI agent Michael Palian, testified that he witnessed senators crying as they hid from rioters who entered the Capitol on January 6.
The jury was told that on January 6 in the late afternoon he was assigned to guard a group of over 80 senators at the Capitol.
When he arrived, he said the scene was chaotic. I think shock would be the best way to describe what the senators were feeling. There was some crying.”
The senators returned to the Senate chamber later that night to resume counting electoral college votes, he testified. “It looked like a bomb had gone off in the Capitol, there were broken windows, doors, and lots of debris in the hallways,” Palian explained to the jury.
Early into Monday’s proceedings, before the jury was brought in, Mehta went to great lengths to emphasize that the jury had “no preconceived” prejudices towards the Oath Keepers and the defendants specifically.
He explained to the defendants that he was not going to transfer the case to Virginia. Mehta ticked through statistics from the jury selection process that shed light on how the jurors had responded to questions meant to test their impartiality.
The Oath Keepers of September 17th: Protecting the Pro-Trump Dignitaries from a Capitol-Insurrection-Induced Attack
The members of the Oath Keepers were in North Carolina in September for a campaign rally for Donald Trump, despite not being charged with a crime.
Instead, the lawyers have said, the Oath Keepers had prepared for defensive maneuvers against antifa, believing that leftist counterprotesters would attack Trump supporters that day. The group was also waiting, the lawyers have said, for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move, they claim, that would have given them standing as a militia to employ force of arms in support of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Meggs helped get the job for Roger Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s political adviser, who is scheduled to speak at two rallies in January. Lawyers for the group have used the security job as part of their defense strategy, suggesting the Oath Keepers did not go to Washington to attack the Capitol, but rather to protect pro-Trump dignitaries.
Two days before the Capitol attack, Mr. Meggs named Mr. Harrelson, a welder and Army veteran from Titusville, Fla., as the leader of his “ground team,” prosecutors say.
But not much is known about Mr. Harrelson’s activities or beliefs in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, in large part because he had no social media accounts and deleted most of his cellphone messages after the Oath Keepers left Washington that day.
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Evidence will be heard by the jury that Mr. Harrelson brought rifles to a Comfort Inn in Arlington to help the Oath Keepers in case things went wrong in Washington.
The jurors will also likely hear how Mr. Harrelson entered the building with one of the military “stacks” and joined Mr. Meggs in search of Ms. Pelosi.
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What’s unusual is that Rhodes, the most prominent defendant in the case, with a distinctive black eye patch, is continuing to speak outside the courtroom, too.
While the trial was on a federal holiday and in federal custody, Rhodes gave a telephone interview to a website known for peddling conspiracy theories, calling himself a martyr.
“But just like Nelson Mandela was willing to go to jail for life, he did 20 years, you have to be willing to do that,” Rhodes said, comparing himself to the anti-apartheid leader who spent nearly three decades in prison. “You have to be willing to take the hit if you’re a person who’s a freedom fighter and is standing up for rights. Because if you don’t, then what you become is a slave.”
The Oath Keepers Trial: Towards a Resolution of a Serious Prosecutive Controversy on the Capitol
That strategy could test the patience of Judge Mehta and the jury. It’s already led to repeated and sometimes lengthy arguments at the bench or over the phones, while the jury and audience hear the loud courtroom hushing device.
The Oath Keepers trial is expected to go into the first or second week in November, according to Judge Mehta. Over 3 1/2 weeks prosecutors were going to call about 40 witnesses. They’re not quite through week two, and on witness No. 10.
This seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers is one of the two most serious the Justice Department has brought following the siege on the Capitol. Inside the same courthouse, prosecutors continue their work in secret, before grand juries that appear to be investigating the money and organization behind the Jan. 6 rally, as well as a scheme to replace slates of legitimate electors in swing states with fake electors.
The testimony of the man who testified was that he only heard the end of the phone call. Prosecutors didn’t dwell on the issue, but it piqued interest given questions about Donald Trump’s dealings with the Secret Service on the day of the Capitol attack and missing text messages from agents during that time.
Lawyers for Rhodes call that language bombast and bravado and they say the government is stretching when it alleges a formal conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election.
The lack of recorded conversations, or explicit text messages among the defendants has been highlighted by the defense teams during cross examination.
The Corrupt Oath Keepers: Stewart Rhodes’s Co-Conspirators and Their Charges in the Decay of Jan. 6, 2021
The relationship between the Oath Keepers and the agents has come under scrutiny, after it was revealed last week that Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the group, was in touch with agents.
“If Trump doesn’t get off his ass, we are going to have to rise up in insurrection against the ChiCom puppet Biden, or he will be impeached and we will have to die,” Rhodes said in an early December message. “Take your pick.”
SoRelle, a general counsel for the right-wing militia group, pleaded not guilty last month to charges related to the attack on the US Capitol.
After a month of testimony, the government rested its case Thursday in the seditious conspiracy trial against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four other members of the far-right group.
The trial is the most consequential yet to emerge from the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation into the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Rhodes and the other defendants are accused of plotting to use force to prevent Joe Biden from taking office as president.
The jury heard a month of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses, including FBI special agents, U.S. Capitol Police officers, former Oath Keepers, and two members of the group who stormed the Capitol and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
The seditious conspiracy, obstruction and other offenses against Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators are in relation to January 6.
Watkins, Meggs and Harrelson donned tactical gear and forced their way up the Capitol steps that day and into the building. Rhodes and Caldwell were on Capitol grounds, but did not enter the complex.
A Man in a Hat: The Corrupt Phenomenology of the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack and a Defense Lawyer’s Call for Action
The conspiracy did not end on Jan. 6 but continued through Biden’s inauguration. The government used one of its last witnesses to introduce critical evidence on that front.
The prosecutions called a military veteran who works at software development in Texas, who stated that he met Rhodes and others in the parking lot of a store in Dallas after the Capitol attack.
“If you don’t, then Biden/Kamala will turn all that power on you, your family, and all of us. You and your family will be imprisoned and killed,” Rhodes wrote in the message, which was shown to the jury. We veterans will die fighting against traitors who you turned over all of the power of the Presidency to.
Rhodes is of the opinion that Trump must be the “savior” of the Republic, not a man who surrendered it to traitors and enemies who murdered millions of Americans.
The prosecutor played clips of the recording that Alpers made. In one snippet, Rhodes can be heard saying: “If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just gonna let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I would hang Pelosi from the lamppost.
Being a person who has gone to war means blood is going to get shed on the streets of where your family lives, Alpers testified. I wondered if pushing this to President Trump was in the best interest.
He said he called Oath Keepers to meet at a central point but it was to keep them out of trouble, not to assault the Capitol. He said he didn’t get some cellphone messages related to the events of Jan. 6 until the next day.
The election was unconstitutional, according to Rhodes, and that made it invalid. “You really can’t have a winner of an unconstitutional election.”
They need to discuss the constitutional issues instead of focusing on the computers and other theories of voter fraud, Rhodes said, to determine whether there is fraud on the ground.
Rhodes told the jury Friday how he was honorably discharged from the military and went on to study law at Yale, focusing his attention on the Bill of Rights – which Rhodes called “the crown jewel of our Constitution” – and protecting civilian rights in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
“Frankly we kind of embarrassed the police, Rhodes testified, “because we showed them how to do it right, protecting the business owners while still respecting the rights of the protesters.”
If Antifa did try to attack the White House, Rhodes said that “President Trump could use the Insurrection Act, declare this an insurrection, and use myself and other veterans to protect the White House.”
Stewart Rhodes has testified in his own defense in his federal trial that he was not part of planning the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and that members of the far-right Oath Keepers group who busted into the building made a “stupid” decision.
The trial now is in its sixth week, and he said that it was the opening of the door for the political enemies to persecute us.
After the attack, Rhodes said, a woman he describes as his lawyer but that prosecutors call his girlfriend instructed Oath Keepers to keep quiet about their activities. Rhodes said that Kellye SoRelle acted on her own when she told Oath Keepers todelete text messages and other materials.
He brushed off a warning from her that law enforcement would soon show up at his doorstep and he’s a “dissident” authorities know where to find.