The leader and members of the Oath Keepers militia group were prepared to engage in serious violence after the November 2020 election to try to block Biden from taking office as U.S. president, a prosecutor told a federal court jury in Washington, D.C.
The leader and members of the Oath Keepers militia group were prepared to engage in serious violence after the November 2020 election to try to block Joe Biden from taking office as U.S. president, a prosecutor told a federal court jury in Washington, D.C., on Monday, the first day of the trial of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four other Jan. 6, 2021, rioters linked to the far-right group.
In his opening statement, federal prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler alleged that Rhodes and his co-defendants "concocted a plan ... up to and including" using force to block the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. He suggested that the defendants believed that if Congress could be blocked from meeting to ratify the Electoral College's formal affirmation of Biden's election victory, Biden could not be confirmed as president and Trump could remain in office.
Protesters gather at the Capitol building where pro-Trump supporters riot and breached the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. According to Nestler, Rhodes then messaged: "I see no intent by [Trump] to do anything. So the patriots are taking it into their own hands." Subsequently, Oath Keepers were among the leaders of two well-armed "stacks" of protesters who surged up the stairs on the Capitol's east side and entered the building, with a group attempting to enter the Senate chamber, Nestler said.
In their own opening statements to the jury, lawyers for defendants insisted that the prosecution was distorting or mischaracterizing evidence to incriminate their clients. Phillip Linder, Rhodes's defense lawyer, told the jury that while they might not like "some of the things you see defendants did," by the same token, "defendants did nothing illegal that day. ... what the government is trying to tell us is completely wrong.
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