Far-right leader will stay jailed on Capitol riot charges
WASHINGTON — The founder and leader of the farright Oath Keepers militia group remained in jail after his first court appearance on Friday, a day after his arrest on charges he plotted with others to attack the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The seditious conspiracy charges against Stewart Rhodes and 10 other Oath Keepers members or associates are the first to be levied in connection with the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. They’re also the first to be brought by the Justice Department in over a decade.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly Priest Johnson ordered Mr. Rhodes, 56, of Granbury, Texas, to be held in custody until a detention hearing next Thursday in the Dallas suburb of Plano.
Mr. Rhodes appeared in court wearing heavy boots, blue jeans, a faded black Carhartt T-shirt and a blue medical mask. He walked into the courtroom shackled at the wrists and ankles.
After the hearing, Mr. Rhodes’ lawyers said he entered a not guilty plea, plans to fight the charges against him and should be released. Defense attorneys Phillip Linder and James Lee Bright said Mr. Rhodes has no criminal history, no passport and is not a flight risk.
Mr. Bright and Mr. Linder said Mr. Rhodes has been living in Texas for a year and a half but they could not say what brought him to the state. They said he had no family present at the Friday hearing.
An Arizona man who was charged in the same indictment as Mr. Rhodes and other Oath Keepers members also made his first court appearance on Friday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Fine ordered Edward Vallejo, 63, of Phoenix, to remain jailed until a detention hearing next Thursday.
The indictment filed against Mr. Vallejo, Mr. Rhodes and nine other Oath Keepers or associates marks the first time the historically rare charge of seditious conspiracy has been leveled in connection with the wideranging probe, which so far has resulted in charges against more than 700 people.
Earlier Friday, the top leader of another far-right extremist group with members charged in the Capitol riot was released from jail in Washington, D.C. Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio served a fivemonth jail sentence in a case that wasn’t directly related to the Capitol riot.
Mr. Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the Capitol riot and charged with burning a Black Lives Matter banner that had been ripped from a local Black church.