An upcoming trial aims to show Jan. 6 wasn't a spur-of-the-moment protest for the Oath Keepers but part of a plot to stop the transfer of presidential power.
By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, Associated Press The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight.
People are also reading… Their plot would come to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors say, when Oath Keepers wearing helmets and other battle gear were captured on camera shouldering their way through the crowd of angry Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation. The trial could shed new light on Trump's attempts to cling to power. It comes amid growing legal peril for the former president, who faces multiple investigations, including one by the Justice Department into his handling of sensitive government documents.
"When he believed that the President would issue an order invoking the Insurrection Act, he was prepared to follow it. When that invocation did not come, he did precisely nothing," Rhodes lawyers wrote in court documents. "They were willing to give up their entire life," Rhodes told them."Most of us are in our 50s or 60s or older. You've lived a good life. You've lived way past the age of these young men. ... And if you don't stand up now, everything they fought for and died for will be fought for nothing."
"Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as Americans to fight, kill and die for our rights," she wrote in another message. During an interview Dec. 22 with a regional Oath Keepers leader, Rhodes described Jan. 6 as"hard constitutional deadline" for stopping Biden from becoming president. "There is no standard political or legal way out of this," Rhodes wrote in a message on New Year's Eve.Rhodes had instructed them to be ready, if asked, to secure the White House perimeter and"use lethal force if necessary" against anyone, including the National Guard, who might try to remove Trump from the White House, according to court documents in the case of one member who has pleaded guilty.
As word began spreading that people were storming the Capitol, Rhodes wrote:"All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no attempt by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it in their own hands. They've had enough."The first stack, with members wearing protective vests, helmets and communication devices, pushed through the crowd and up the Capitol steps. Over a channel called"Stop the Steal J6" on the walkie-talkie app Zello, Watkins said they were inside.
That night, Rhodes and other Oath Keepers went to dinner at an Olive Garden restaurant in Virginia. In messages over the course of the evening, they indicated their fight was far from over."Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what's coming," Rhodes wrote in another.
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