Oath Keepers, George Washington, and Donald Trump: The case against Donald Trump in the January 6 sexcribing assault on the US Capitol

According to new messages, the founder of Oath Keepers was skeptical that Donald Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act in the lead up to January 6, and that he was preparing to wage his own rebellion.

With the historic case that they had brought against Oath Keepers accused of plotting to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, prosecutors framed up how the jury should think about the allegations with an hour-plus opening statement that kicked off the trial in earnest.

“Ever since our government transferred power from George Washington to John Adams in the year 1797, we have had a core custom of routine and peaceful transfer of power,” Jeffrey S. Nestler, a prosecutor, said in Federal District Court in 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.

The jury was told that the people said what they were going to do and wrote it down. They sprang into action when the chance finally presented itself.

A lawyer for Rhodes told the jurors that they will see evidence that showed that the defendants had no part in the violence that occurred on January 6.

The evidence will show that the defendants didn’t do anything illegal that day, even though you may not like what you see and hear.

Congress couldn’t declare the winner of the election if they couldn’t meet their goals. and that was their goal – to stop by any means necessary the lawful transfer of power, including taking up arms against the United States government,” he said.

Capitol Breathing, Preparing for the Insurrection Act, And Nestler Observed How the Oath Keepers Provowed to Respond

As the video clips played, the jury could see a map of the Capitol that was used to show action that was recorded by video. The chart was perched on an easel in the courtroom and listed the alleged co-conspirators.

The prosecutor used the footage from the attack to identify the defendants and other alleged co-conspirators. When video showing defendant Kelly Meggs was presented, Nestler noted the patch he wore, which said, according to Nestler: “I don’t believe in anything, I’m just here for the violence.”

The Justice Department detail the Oath Keepers preparation for the Capitol breaching and what they are accusing the defendants of doing.

Additionally, Nestler alluded to the belief that Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act; the defense has signaled it plans to argue that the Oath Keepers were preparing to respond to such an invocation.

“Even being bad security guards isn’t itself illegal.” Nestler said. The prosecutor said the goal that they were preparing for was unlawful.

Nestler and Rhodes, the Oath Keepers and the DOJ: Resolving a Boundary in the First Law Enforcement Insurrection Trial

“President Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act,” Nestler said. The defendants need to take charge of their own situation. They needed to activate the plan they had agreed on.”

Rhodes was disbarred after graduating from the Yale Law School, and he has promised to testify in this trial. Anything he says outside of court could result in him hitting him on cross-examination. The prosecutors already have a long stack of texts and transcripts. A spokesman for the Justice Department declined comment on Rhodes’ communication style.

Thomas Caldwell, another defendant, served in the military, Nestler said. He planned to use boats to get across the Potomac based on that water experience.

In December 2020, Rhodes told others that January 6 presented a “hard constitutional deadline,” according to prosecutors, and that they would need to “do it ourselves” if Trump didn’t stop the certification of the election.

“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 hid guns at a hotel outside of Washington, D.C., in case they needed to go into the city in January.

The defendants were alleged to have used “stack” formations to enter the Capitol. He played a video of defendant Jessica Watkins, who allegedly led the first group, pushing against a crowd outside the House chamber shouting “push, push, push! They can’t hold us if we get in there.

Mr. Meggs was part of a group that went looking for Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the day of the building’s inauguration. Mr Rhodes is likely to say that Mr. Meggs went off mission when he went into the building without any instructions from Oath Keepers.

At first, the defendants saw the breach as a success, Nestler said, describing them as “elated,” “boastful” and “proud.” According to the DOJ, the defendants quickly realized they were in legal jeopardy and ordered each other to leave town.

Even with their criminal exposure, Nestler said, Rhodes continued to plot. Rhodes met with someone from Texas to try and connect with former President Trump. The meeting, which had not previously been reported, was secretly recorded by an attendee.

“My only regret is that they should have brought rifles… we could have fixed it right then and there.” Rhodes said of January 6, according to the Justice Department’s opening.

He suggested that there will be gaps in the evidence, such as video, that the Justice Department will show the jury. He said that, once the prosecutors put on their case, the defense will fill in those gaps.

As the defense attorney delivered his opening, he was told to avoid topics that the judge had deemed out of bounds for the trial, at one point Judge Mehta brought him up to the bench for a private discussion.

Among the off-limits topics brought up by Linder that prompted the interventions were comments about the amount prison time the charges bring, the congressional narrative around January 6, remarks about defendants sitting in jail, and certain 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 didn’t mean anything to the Capitol that day”, said Linder, as he described some of the rhetoric among the defendants.

Linder said that Rhodes is planning to testify in his own defense to explain what he believed would happen on January 6. At least one cooperating Oath Keeper, William Todd Wilson, is also scheduled to testify during the trial, Linder said Monday. Wilson allegedly witnessed Rhodes try to contact Trump on the evening of January 6, according to an allegation that he will be asked about.

The justice department is pointing to a military term for Quick Reaction Force as the reason why Caldwell allegedly organized that day.

He stressed the word “reaction” in that term, and said that QRFs are organized to respond “to emergency situations,” describing a QRF as “a break the glass emergency team.”

Rhodes told the jury that wasn’t the case and claimed that the QRF’s were set up at an event the Oath Keepers attended to “respond in case there is an emergency,” including if his men were ever injured.

The seditious conspiracy charge that the DOJ brought touches on agreements that hamper the government’s ability to conduct its business, and it was a defense that would argue that the Justice Department did not prove that Caldwell organized the QRF with that goal in mind.

He said that the FBI’s investigation was mishandled, calling it an outrage. The FBI used Facebook messages from the movie “The Princess Bride” to justify the arrest of Caldwell.

“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 told the jury how the Justice Department had missed context in their case against Watkins.

He said that the Zello chats sound incredibly damming if you listen to them with no idea what’s going on. He pointed out her attempts to engage the FBI in its investigation.

Crying in the Capitol: Agent Michael Palian tells the first prosecution witness how his experience in the Senate on January 6 was instructive

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.

Palian told the jury that on January 6, he was sent to the Capitol in the late afternoon and assigned to guard a group of over 80 senators sheltering in the Capitol complex.

“It was chaotic,” Palian said of the scene when he arrived. “I think shock would be the best word to describe what the senators were feeling. There was some crying.”

After escorting senators back to the Senate chamber, they resumed counting electoral college votes. Inside the Capitol, “it looked like a bomb had gone off,” Palian said, recounting “windows broken, doors broken, lots of debris in the hallways” to the jury.

They did not say that strong feelings against January 6 affected their ability to be fair. None of the jurors reported having any strong feelings towards Oath Keepers or the specific defendants, and most of them had already heard of the Oath Keepers, according to Mehta.

He did so while explaining why he was denying a request from the defendants that the case be transferred to Virginia. Mehta showed how statistics from the jury selection process help to illuminate how jurors answered questions meant to show their impartiality.

The Oath Keepers, Stone, and Pro-Trump Activists: What Happened to Rhodes and Harrelson?

The jury heard evidence that Mr. Rhodes and others were prepared to attend two pro-Trump rallies in Washington before the beginning of the new year.

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.

The Oath Keepers enlisted Mr. Meggs to help them provide security for Roger J. Stone, a political adviser to Mr. Trump. 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.

The leader of Mr. Meggs’s ground team was a man named Mr. Harrelson, 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.

The History of the Harrelson Charged with a Weapon of a Warped Spectator in Washington, Va., and the Case Against Pelosi

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Mr. Harrelson is expected to be found guilty of bringing firearms to a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., as part of a “quick reaction force” that was supposed to rush into Washington and aid the Oath Keepers if things went wrong.

The jurors are likely to hear about how Mr. Harrelson and Mr. Meggs went looking for Ms. Pelosi.

Every trial is different, with a mix of personalities that seem both familiar and peculiar. Here is a look at what it would be like inside the room.

The man with the black eye patch is continuing to speak outside of the courtroom as well.

This week, while the trial was on break for a federal holiday, and while in federal custody, Rhodes gave a telephone interview to InfoWars, a website known for peddling conspiracy theories, likening himself to 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. If you are a freedom fighter and are standing up for rights, then you need to be willing to take the hit. If you don’t, what you become is a slave.

Sessions in the Capitol Controversy: Defending a State-Dependent Seiberg-Trump Attempt in a New Election Campaign

But that strategy risks testing the patience of Judge Amit Mehta and members of the nine-man, seven-woman 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.

Judge Mehta told lawyers in an unrelated case this week that he expects the Oath Keepers trial to extend into the first or second week in November, on the far end of an estimate he gave the jury pool. Prosecutors had planned to call about 40 witnesses over 3 1/2 weeks. They are still not through week two and on witness 10.

The Justice Department has brought two seditious conspiracy cases in the wake of 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.

Zimmerman, who said he only heard Rhodes’ end of the phone call, testified that Rhodes asked the Secret Service agent about what sorts of weapons might be allowed near the site. 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 defense teams have used cross examination to highlight the lack of explicit text messages or recorded conversations among the defendants that outline a plot to burst through the doors of the Capitol and stop the electoral count.

The 2021 Capitol Attack and SoRelle, Rhodes, and Oath Keepers: A Grand Jury Trial in the U.S. Capitol

In a December message, the deputy national security adviser said that if Trump didn’t use the insurrection Act to defeat the ChiCom puppet coup, then the US would have to rise up in insurrection against Biden. “Take your pick.”

SoRelle, a self-described general counsel for the right-wing militia group, pleaded not guilty last month to several charges relating to the attack on the US Capitol.

The government rested Thursday in the biggest case so far in the Justice Department’s investigation into the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The defendants are accused of scheming to prevent Biden from becoming president.

The trial is the most consequential to emerge from the investigation into the 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 testimony from more than two dozen people, including FBI agents and members of the Oath Keepers group who were charged for storming the Capitol.

They are charged with seditious conspiracy, obstruction and other offenses in connection with January 6.

The trio of Watkins, Meggs and Harrelson were dressed in tactical gear and rushed up the Capitol steps into the building. They weren’t in the complex but were on Capitol grounds.

Towards a Resolution of the Capitol War Controversy: Prosecutors Describe How the Antifa Campaign Against the Biden Presidential Inspiral

The conspiracy continued even after Biden’s inauguration, prosecutors say. The government used one of its last witnesses to introduce critical evidence on that front.

According to testimony Wednesday, he met Rhodes and several other Oath Keepers in the parking lot of an electronics store in the Dallas area after the Capitol attack.

Biden/Kamala will turn all the power on you and your family if you don’t. The jury was shown the message in which Rhodes said that he would kill you and your family. “We will die in combat in US soil, fighting against the traitors who were turned over all of the powers of the Presidency to.”

Rhodes urges Trump to be the “savior of the Republic, not a man who surrendered it to deadly traitors and enemies, who then enslaved and murdered millions of Americans.”

According to the recording, Rhodes said that they could have fixed it right then and there. I would hang Pelosi from the lamppost.

“Asking for civil war to be on American ground and understanding, being a person who’s gone to war, that means blood is going to get shed on the streets where your family lives,” Alpers testified. I wondered if it would be in President Trump’s best interest to push this.

FBI agents testified that in thousands of text messages, the defendants did not have a concrete plan to storm the Capitol. The two witnesses who were cooperating said that there was no particular plan to stop Congress and that they were unaware of a specific plan.

Rhodes testified that the election was invalid because he believed it to be unconstitutional. “You really can’t have a winner of an unconstitutional election.”

“Everyone kept focusing on the computers” and other theories of voter fraud, Rhodes said, instead of the constitutional issues, which they needed to discuss before figuring out “whether there’s fraud on the ground.”

The jury heard Friday that Rhodes studied law at Yale after leaving the military, and focused his attention on protecting civilian rights in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The police were embarrassed because they were taught how to do it right and still respect the protesters’ rights.

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 testified in his federal trial that he was not part of the plan for the assault on the Capitol by members of the Oath Keepers group.

Breaching the building “opened the door for our political enemies to persecute us,” Rhodes said, and he said that’s exactly what happened, pointing to the trial now in its sixth week.

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. Kellye SoRelle acted on her own, when she told Oath Keepers to destroy text messages and other materials.

She warned him that law enforcement would be at his door, but he brushed it off, saying that he already knows where they would find him.

A prosecutor showed the jury Signal messages in which Rhodes told his teammates that they would have a Quadrangular Frisbee event on January 6.

The militia leader had told the prosecutors that he was worried about a civil war starting after Joe Biden became the president and that he hoped to avoid it.

In a secretly recorded conversation after the January 6th shooting at the Capitol, Rhodes said he wish the Oath Keepers had brought rifles.