The landmark incitement trial of five members of the far-right Oath Keepers opened Monday when prosecutors told a jury the group had heavily armed to attack the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a bid to keep Donald Trump in the presidency.
Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Nestler said Stewart Rhodes, the eye-patched former soldier and Yale law school graduate, knew exactly what he was doing as he led militia supporters to the Capitol.
Nestler showed videos of the violent attack by dozens of group members in military-style riot gear and said Rhodes guided them “like a general on the battlefield” as they tried to prevent 2020 election winner Joe Biden from being certified as the next president becomes.
On Jan. 6, the Oath Keepers “concocted a plan for armed rebellion … contemplating violent opposition to the United States government,” Nestler said.
“They didn’t go to the capital to defend themselves or to help. They went on the attack,” he said.
– Rare Charge –
Nestler’s presentation was the opening argument in the case, in which Rhodes and four other Oath Keep leaders, Kelly Meggs, Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy.
With a possible 20-year sentence, the indictment is the toughest yet in the prosecution of hundreds who participated in the attack on the Capitol aimed at reversing President Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
Of the roughly 870 accused, who left Congress evacuated and dozens of police officers injured by attackers, most face minor crimes such as assault and disruption of official government meetings, and illegal entry.
The government has reserved incitement for only a few dozen of the attackers, mostly members of self-proclaimed militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who are said to have planned and coordinated the attack.
Attorneys for the Oath Keepers are expected to argue before the jury Monday afternoon that they believed Trump would invoke the “Insurrection Act” of 1807 and use them to protect the country.
That claim has raised expectations that the trial could reveal more about the connections between the attack on the Capitol and members of the Trump administration or his personal advisers.
But while anticipating that argument, Nestler said it was something Rhodes, a graduate of one of the country’s most prestigious law schools, hatched as a legal strategy to protect her actions.
“Rhodes’ talk about the Insurrection Act was legal cover,” he said.
Although Trump was urged by many supporters to invoke it in the weeks and days leading up to Jan. 6, he never did, he noted.
Instead, Rhodes and the others spoke in encrypted chats about starting a civil war to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.
“Personally, I will start the civil war myself” if Congress confirms Biden as president-elect, Caldwell wrote to the others, the jury was told.
