Militia leader charged in insurrection
Texas man is arrested, accused of seditious conspiracy
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday charged Stewart Rhodes — a Texan who founded and leads the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers — with seditious conspiracy, alleging he led a group plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.
It is the most serious charge the FBI has leveled yet in connection to the U.S. Capitol riots and comes as some Texas Republicans have sought to play down what happened that day. The insurrection left five dead, including a Capitol police officer, and 140 other officers injured.
The FBI says the 56-year-old Rhodes, of Granbury, and 10 others charged Thursday with the same crime spent weeks recruiting and training members for what Rhodes repeatedly predicted would be a “bloody” battle, according to charging documents. They allegedly purchased and brought weapons to Washington, D.C., and breached the Capitol with a plan to stop Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” Rhodes wrote on the Signal messaging service to his cohorts two days after the election, according to charging documents. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.”
“It will be a bloody and desperate fight,” Rhodes wrote in a separate message in December 2020. “We are going to have a fight. That can’t be avoided.”
Rhodes has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. He previously told the Washington Post that he was communicating with members of his group on Jan. 6 to “keep them out of trouble,” and emphasized that Oath Keepers associates who did go into the Capitol “went totally off mission.”
Jonathon A. Moseley, an attorney for Rhodes and another alleged conspirator, said he believes the Department of Justice leveled the seditious conspiracy charges in response to pressure.
“Everybody has been asking, ‘Why don’t you get tougher on them?’ and suddenly they get tougher on them,” Moseley said. “The facts don’t support seditious conspiracy or any of the charges, except possibly that the Oath Keepers went into the building.”
The charge of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 siege carries a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Rhodes is at least the 65th Texan charged so far in connection to the insurrection, which followed then-president Donald Trump’s urging of supporters at a rally to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump has falsely claimed that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.
Texas is second only to Florida in the number of its residents arrested for their roles that day.
Rhodes was arrested in Little Elm on Thursday morning. Also charged in the alleged conspiracy was Roberto Minuta, 37, of Prosper, who was arrested in August.
Minuta wrote in a December 2020 message to an unidentified individual that Rhodes “feels like it’s go time, the time for peaceful protest is over in his eyes,” according to charging documents.
Of the dozens of Texans charged so far, 11 have pleaded guilty. Fifty-two cases are pending before federal judges in Washington, D.C., as new arrests by the FBI continue to trickle in. Six Texans have been sentenced for their involvement. Three were ordered to serve 60 days or less in custody. They include Tam Pham, a veteran Houston police officer sentenced to 45 days in jail. Two others were ordered to 12 months’ probation and 90 days’ home detention.
Rhodes, who wears an eye patch following a gun accident in the ’90s, is a former Army paratrooper who once worked as a staffer for Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman and presidential candidate. Rhodes graduated from Yale Law School in 2004 where he won a prize for the best paper on the Bill of Rights, according to Above the Law. He clerked for an Arizona Supreme Court justice before entering the political fray. Over the next two decades, he evolved from a libertarian to an alt-right militia proponent who could summon large groups of weapons-trained supporters to aid in an array of anti-government causes.
In March 2009, while living in Nevada, Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says is among the largest far-right, antigovernment groups in the country. It claims to have tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members.
From the outset, Rhodes’ group envisioned a day when the government became a dictatorship that imposed martial law and sought to take away people’s guns.
The group’s dues-paying members vow that there are 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” including warrantless searches or orders to disarm the public or infringe on free speech — because they consider them unlawful.
In 2013, the group began providing vigilante justice. Rhodes appeared on the speakers list for a “come and take it” rally in San Antonio organized by friend and fellow Texan Alex Jones, the farright broadcaster and conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed the 2012 massacre of 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax. Rhodes took to the lectern at a gun rally at the Alamo that day, prompted by a rumor among extremists that the United Nations was taking over the historic Texas site.
The group also sent militia members to aid Cliven Bundy’s 2014 standoff in rural Nevada over grazing rights, mobilized pro-gun rights patrols at statehouses in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre and deployed armed members to protect businesses during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., in 2015. Later that year, Rhodes offered protection to a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after a 2015 Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing that right.
When Trump began sounding the alarm about a caravan of immigrants heading north from Central America, Rhodes sent the Oath Keepers to help find and expose child sex-trafficking rings that he believed were operating at the border.
Rhodes’ arrest came a week after the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack, which highlighted the partisan divide on how the event is discussed by Democrats and Republican a year after it happened.
While Democrats have framed the insurrection as an existential threat to the country, Republicans have been far more hesitant to assign blame for it, fearing they might draw the ire of Trump or his supporters.
Rhodes was originally scheduled to testify on Thursday before the Democrat-led House select commission investigating the riots, his attorney said, but he negotiated to have his appearance pushed back until next month. Moseley, who is representing Rhodes before the committee, said he was on the phone with Rhodes to discuss it when his client got a call that the FBI was outside to arrest him.
The FBI says Rhodes held an online meeting with Oath Keepers members on Nov. 9, 2020, and outlined a plan to stop the transfer of power, including preparations for the potential use of force, and urged those on the call to participate, according to charging documents.
“We have been issued a call to action for D.C.,” Kelly Meggs, a 52-year-old Floridian who is also charged in the conspiracy, wrote in a separate Signal group chat, according to charging documents. “This is the moment we signed up for.”
In the following weeks, Oath Keepers groups held training sessions on “unconventional warfare,” road blocks, ambushes and more, according to charging documents. Rhodes allegedly spent thousands on guns and related equipment.
Members of the group allegedly stashed firearms in hotels in Virginia in case they were needed for a “quick reaction force” as Rhodes and others marched on the Capitol, equipped with weapons and supplies, including knives, batons, camouflaged combat uniforms, tactical vests, helmets, eye protection and radio equipment, charging documents say.
After the riots, charging documents say, Rhodes wrote in a message that “patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming.”
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war. Too late for that. Prepare your mind, body, spirit.” Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, to his cohorts two days after the November 2020 election, according to charging documents