The indictment of the leader of the Oath Keepers, and 10 other members or associates was stunning because federal prosecutors charged them with seditious conspiracy, a rarely-used Civil War-era statute.
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, wrote fellow members, according to court documents. “Too late for that. Prepare your mind. body. spirit.”
Hundreds of people have been charged in the violent effort to stop the congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Many were animated by Trump’s speech at a rally near the White House, just before the riot, where he said: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Rhodes moved to Montana and relocated his defense practice there but took a “hard right turn away from politics” the SPLC said, and launched the Oath Keepers. “During this time, Rhodes became increasingly conspiratorial, adopting and peddling a number of fringe right-wing conspiracy theories with the assistance of his friend Alex Jones,” according to the book “Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group,” by University at Albany assistant professor Sam Jackson. Jones is a conspiracy theorist and Infowars host.
On Dec. 14, 2020, as the electors in the states cast their votes, Rhodes published a letter on the Oath Keepers’ website “advocating for the use of force to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power,” according to the documents. “All I see Trump doing is complaining,” Rhodes wrote, according to prosecutors. “I see no attempt by him to do anything. So the patriots are taking it in their own hands. They’ve had enough.”
Court documents show discord among the group as early as the night of the attack. Someone identified in the records only as “Person Eleven” blasted the group “a huge f—n joke” and called Rhodes “the dumba— I heard you were,” court documents say. But as the months wore on it seemed increasingly unlikely anyone would face anything more serious like sedition — when two or more people in the United States. conspire to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the government, or to levy war against it, or to oppose by force and try to prevent the execution of any law.
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