Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy

Rhodes, in a dark suit and black eye-patch from an old gun accident, watched impassively as verdicts were read for the defendants facing a 13-count indictment.

The indictment brought against Rhodes, 56, and other Oath Keepers associates in January was the first time the U.S. government leveled the historically rare charge of seditious conspiracy in the massive Jan. 6 investigation. He is the highest-profile figure to face trial in connection with rioting by angry Trump supporters who injured scores of officers and ransacked offices, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers.

Rhodes and followers, dressed in combat-style gear, converged on the Capitol after staging an “arsenal” of weapons at nearby hotels, ready to take up arms at Rhodes’s direction, the government charged. Rhodes’s defense said he and co-defendants came to Washington as bodyguards and peacekeepers, bringing firearms only in case Trump met their demand to mobilize private militia to stop Biden from becoming president.

Analysts called the outcome a vindication for the Justice Department.

“The jury’s verdict on seditious conspiracy confirms that January 6, 2021, was not just ‘legitimate political discourse’ or a peaceful protest that got out of hand. This was a planned, organized, violent assault on the lawful authority of the U.S. government and the peaceful transfer of power,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University.

“Now the only remaining question is how much higher did those plans go, and who else might be held criminally responsible,” Eliason said.

The verdict in Rhodes’s case likely will be taken as a bellwether for two remaining Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trials set for December against five other Oath Keepers and leaders of the Proud Boys, including the longtime chairman Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio. Both Rhodes and Tarrio are highly visible leaders of the alt-right or far-right anti-government movements, and were highlighted at hearings probing the attack earlier this year by the House Jan. 6 committee.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who helped defend the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he ran over to the federal courthouse when he heard there was a verdict. He sat sweating in the front row as the verdict was read.

“I was emotional,” Dunn said afterward. “I didn’t expect to cry.” He thanked the jury and the Justice Department for their work on the case.

“I don’t look at it like a victory,” Dunn said. “A victory is when you win. This was right. This was about doing the right thing.”

The Justice Department arrested Rhodes in January and Tarrio in June after an internal debate over whether the magnitude and organization behind the Capitol attack merited bringing rarely used seditious conspiracy charges. Bringing the politically charged count posed a higher risk at trial because it required that prosecutors prove the defendants harbored an intent to forcibly oppose the federal government, compared to the charge of conspiring to obstruct a proceeding of Congress, which is punishable by the same 20-year maximum prison term.

The Justice Department has argued in related cases that a conviction on either charge should carry the same seven to nine-year sentence under advisory federal guidelines, a potential starting point for the judge in Rhodes’s case. But the department calculated it was worth the risk to try to send a public message by charging the defendants with one of the most serious political crimes in a wider attack on democracy.

Rhodes, who was at the Capitol but did not enter on Jan. 6, and Tarrio, who allegedly directed his group from Baltimore, drew heightened scrutiny because of the prominence of their followers’ actions at the Capitol and linkages to violence. Both also claimed ties to a long list of Trump advisers associated with the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results — including Trump political confidant Roger Stone, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander and former national security aide Michael Flynn — while attorney Sidney Powell’s nonprofit raised legal defense funds for Rhodes co-defendants.

Though prosecutors sought to prove only that Rhodes plotted with co-defendants to obstruct the presidential transition, both sides acknowledged that he was in contact with Stone, Alexander and Flynn during the post-election period. Oath Keepers provided them with bodyguards and communicated in a “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group ahead of Jan. 6.

Rhodes and co-defendants emphasized in testimony that there was no plan to enter the Capitol and that their participation was spur-of-the-moment. But prosecutors said their words and actions demonstrated tacit agreement with an illegal plot proposed by Rhodes repeatedly in public and private statements for weeks leading up to Jan. 6, warning that “bloody civil war” was necessary to keep Trump in office if the election results were not overturned.

The verdict is the latest hinge-point in Trump’s political fortunes. Rhodes’s trial concluded as the former president announced his renewed candidacy for the White House in 2024 after midterm elections in which his party failed to match historical gains in Congress and voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates and 2020 election deniers. Closing arguments began the day Attorney General Merrick Garland named special counsel Jack Smith to take over the ongoing investigation into efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election and related matters.

On trial with Rhodes are Kelly Meggs, 53, an auto dealership manager from Dunnellon, Fla., who prosecutors described as the “Florida state lead” on Jan. 6; Kenneth Harrelson, 42, a medically discharged former Army sergeant and father of two from Titusville, Fla., who prosecutors called the “ground team lead”; Jessica Watkins, 39, another Army veteran and bar owner and militia organizer from Woodstock, Ohio; and Thomas Caldwell, 68, a retired Navy intelligence officer from Berryville, Va. Like Rhodes, Watkins and Caldwell testified in their own defense.

All were accused of conspiring to engage in sedition, to obstruct Congress’s affirmation of President Biden’s victory and to impede lawmakers from performing their official duties on Jan. 6. Meggs, Harrelson and Watkins, who went into the Capitol, were also accused of damaging property, and all were charged with destroying evidence but Watkins, who faced a separate rioting count.

The jury found only defendants Rhodes and Meggs guilty of seditious conspiracy. The jury also split by finding only Meggs and Watkins guilty of conspiring to obstruct Congress, while convicting all five of actually obstructing it. Jurors convicted Meggs, Harrelson and Watkins of conspiring to impede lawmakers, but not property destruction, while each defendant was found guilty of rioting and destruction of evidence.

In arguments and testimony over eight weeks, prosecutors revealed a series of communications at key times from Rhodes to Stone, Tarrio and others in the 2020 post-election period, as well as with other co-conspirators and defendants who entered the building.

After networks declared the election for Biden, on Nov. 7, 2020, Rhodes asked the Stone chat group, “What’s the plan?” and shared an action plan with the group and Oath Keepers leaders that includedstorming Congress. That day and over coming weeks, including in two open letters to Trump, Rhodes spurred followers with growing urgency to be ready for an “armed rebellion” or “bloody civil war,” organizing members who came to Washington with firearms prepared for violence, according to several who testified.

Two Florida Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct Congress testified that when they breached the Capitol, it was with the understanding that Rhodes had directed them to stop the election certification by any means necessary, including potentially committing treason and risking death.

“That’s why we brought our firearms,” one said.

Other witnesses recorded Rhodes statements and turned them over to the FBI, saying they quit the Oath Keepers because they wanted no part of his plans.

“It sounded like we were going to war against the United States government,” said a former member who recorded a Nov. 9, 2020, online meeting in which Rhodes told 100 Oath Keepers leaders, “We’re not getting out of this without a fight.” Another member testified that he quit over “unchained” calls for violence to prevent Biden from taking office.

Distancing himself from the actions of co-defendants, Rhodes took the stand in his own defense and denied any effort to prevent Biden’s inauguration. Rhodes called it “stupid” and “off-mission” for co-defendants to enter the building. He said he had “nothing to do with” stockpiling of weapons or deletion of evidence.

“All of my effort was on what Trump could do,” Rhodes testified. He said his focus was lawfully lobbying Trumpto invoke the Insurrection Act to legally call out the military and private militia to keep power. Rhodes testified that he purchased $20,000 of firearms and related equipment before Jan. 6, and members brought their own guns, waiting for such a call.

The call never came. Rhodes asserted that his encouragement of armed resistance was meant for after Biden took office, not to stop the transfer of power. Rhodes said he still believed the election was unconstitutional.

Rhodes’s defense team urged jurors to focus on testimony that there was no specific plan to break into the Capitol or stop Congress’s joint session, and argued emphatically that therefore there was no conspiracy or agreement to violate the law.

“Venting is not a meeting of the minds. Expressing hatred and anger is not a meeting of the minds in this country,” Rhodes attorney James Lee Bright said in closing arguments, describing what he called a lot of “horribly heated rhetoric and bombast” by defendants.

“We’ve had 50 witnesses in this case. Not one person has testified that there was a plan,” Bright said.

Prosecutors said that notion was misleading. The question was not whether co-conspirators specifically planned to breach the Capitol, but whether they seized the opportunity to do so in a wider plot by Rhodes to keep Trump in power through coercion, forcibly preventing lawmakers from confirming the election, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler said.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn L. Rakoczy showed jurors a Dec. 10 text message by Rhodes to Oath Keepers attorney Kellye SoRelle, Rhodes’s girlfriend and his post-election liaison to groups working to flip the results, including Trump’s campaign and the legal team of Rudy Giuliani. Rhodes told SoRelle that if Trump did not act, “we will have to rise up in insurrection (rebellion).”

On Christmas Day in 2020, Rhodes told Florida co-defendants he doubted Congress would keep Trump in the White House on Jan. 6, but that they would try. “The only chance we/he has is if we scare the s— out of them and convince them it will be torches and pitchforks time,” Rhodes wrote. “And he [Trump] needs to know that if he fails to act, then we will.”

In middle of Jan. 6 riot, Oath Keepers chief reached out to Proud Boys

Four days after Jan. 6, Rhodes sought to pass a violent message to Trump — recorded by an intermediary and given to the FBI instead — that it was not too late to use paramilitary groups to stay in power by force.

If Trump was “just gonna let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said. “We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang f—-ing Pelosi from the lamppost,” he said, referring to House Speaker Nancy A. Pelosi (D-Calif.), in a recording played for jurors.

The federal government last brought sedition charges against right-wing militants in 2010. A judge acquitted members of the self-described militia Hutaree in Michigan, saying U.S. authorities failed to prove the group had firm plans to launch attacks in an anti-government uprising.

The last successful federal seditious conspiracy conviction at trial came in 2005 when Ali al-Timimi, a Northern Virginia cleric and U.S.-born citizen, was found guilty of inciting followers known as the “Virginia jihad network” to wage war against the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Rhodes’s group was the first of about 50 defendants to face trial in connection with Jan. 6 on some type of conspiracy charge. The government has secured felony convictions against all 14 Jan. 6 defendants who have gone to trial on felony counts, although juries hung on some charges in two cases.

Overall, about 900 people face federal charges in the rioting, half with felonies such as assaulting police or obstructing a congressional proceeding. About 450, roughly half of the total charged, have pleaded guilty.

This developing story has been continuously updated.