The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center.
Rhodes intends to take the stand to argue he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act to call up a militia to support him, his lawyers have said. Trump didn’t do that, but Rhodes’ team says that what prosecutors allege was an illegal conspiracy was “actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize” the law.
Rhodes’ lawyers have argued Trump could have called up a militia in response to “what he perceived as a conspiracy to deprive a class of persons in several states of their voting rights.” Rhodes published an open letter on the Oath Keepers’ website in December 2020 urging Trump to use the Insurrection Act to “‘stop the steal’ and defeat the coup.”
The defense would have to convince the jury that the Oath Keepers really intended to defend the government, not use force against it, said David Alan Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor who’s now a professor at Stanford Law School. Defense lawyers say the quick reaction force teams were defensive forces only to be used if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act. If Rhodes really wanted to lead a revolution, his lawyers say there was no better opportunity to deploy the quick reaction force than when hundreds of people were storming the Capitol. But the Oath Keepers never did.
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