Jason Dolan, the Oath Keepers, and the Transfer of Presidential Power from George Washington to John Adams, D.C. (J.D. Rodr’es, NJ.)
A member of the Oath Keepers who is cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation of the far-right militia group told a jury Tuesday that he packed his car full of weapons and traveled to Washington, DC, to stop Joe Biden from assuming the presidency “by any means necessary.”
The federal prosecutors who are prosecuting Mr. Rhodes and four other members of the Oath Keepers said in their opening arguments that their message was an initial step in a larger effort to stop the transfer of presidential power.
“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.
Jason Dolan, a 46-year-old former Marine from Florida, is the first of several Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the same alleged conspiracy to take the stand.
He made clear that the extremists intended to try and keep Donald Trump in power by intimidating Congress, which was going to certify the election results.
Dolan told the jury that he wanted them to be afraid of him. “People will act out of kindness, they will act out of charity, but they act out of fear too. I could scare them into doing the right thing if they weren’t going to do the right thing.
His testimony is critical to the case as prosecutors try to establish that Oath Keepers are prepared to stop the certification of the 2020 election if Congress doesn’t comply.
The jury was riveted by his testimony, taking notes and watching him on the stand, but members of the jury gasped when he brought his guns into the room. Four of the defendants – Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell – watched intently as Dolan testified. The fifth defendant, Kenneth Harrelson, didn’t look at the man. The five have all denied the charges.
Prosecutors had spent two weeks reading messages from the defendants to the jury and playing secretly recorded audio from their plans for Washington. Three Oath Keepers who are not facing any charges testified under subpoena about the group’s operations.
Prosecutors used Dolan’s testimony as a translation – asking him repeatedly how he understood Signal messages from the five defendants, what he believed the command structure of the organization to be, and how the group planned for the day.
“I didn’t feel like I was alone,” Dolan said, adding that the organization gave him a sense of belonging. He liked that the group was primarily made up of military or law enforcement veterans “who felt the same way as I did.”
As he sat in his garage in December, he read messages coming in from the Oath Keepers in Florida, he said.
“What did I learn about the Insurrection Act” when President Pence and the Pentagon met, and what happened after the first two months of the war
“I think that I was pretty naive, downright stupid with some of the decisions I made at the time,” he testified. I think President Trump was smart to not invoke the Insurrection Act because I think there would have been a lot of violence.
The crowd had begun to form when he arrived at the Capitol. He noticed a strong reaction when it was learned that Pence was moving forward with the certification.
“You had a pissed off angry crowd,” Dolan said. If anything was going to happen to stop the certification of the election, it seemed to me at least at this point that it was going to happen.
Dolan and Harrelson entered the Capitol together, he testified, around the same time as the Oath Keepers “stack” formation. Prosecutors played video of Harrelson and Dolan chanting “treason” as they walked into the Rotunda.
He continued, “I wanted them to hear and feel the same things I was feeling at the time. I felt like I had been betrayed. They should hear and feel the rage that I felt, and I wanted them to do it. They were betraying – what I saw at the time was that they were betraying our country.”
But those reforms were more easily ordered than executed. A department inspector general report released this year found that the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy was unable to identify the scope of the problem across the services because it used numerous reporting systems that were not interconnected. Commanders often had no idea what the rules were. As a result, the department “cannot fully implement policy and procedures to address extremist activity without clarifying the definitions of ‘extremism,’ ‘extremist,’ ‘active advocacy’ and ‘active participation,’” the report concluded.
The end of wars and the return of the disillusioned veterans they can produce have often been followed by a spike in extremism. The white power movement grew after the end of the Vietnam War, with veterans often playing leading roles. Antigovernment activity climbed in the 1990s after the first Iraq war, culminating in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, an Army veteran who had served in Operation Desert Storm. A researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center said that groups can give veterans a sense of purpose after they leave the military.
Andrew Turner ended his Navy career after breaking his hand and being loathing of the government. He’d served around the world, from South Korea to Iraq, and the experience had left him disabled and furious. “When the military was done with me, they threw me on a heap. He said in an interview that he was angry and took it personally.
Mr Turner realized that the group wasn’t a political association, it was a service-oriented one. Private online forums were full of racist language, and members were flirting with violence. He walked away after six months. Vulnerable people are easy to find at their weakest moments. I was not sure, but if anyone joins the Oath Keepers today, they know what they’re getting into.
The military should do a few things that could make a difference. The best training, counseling, and discussion of extremists can start long before service members retire, and need to continue after they do. Meeting the challenge requires better funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and staff training, so that members struggling can be steered down a different path.