‘We must defeat them’: new evidence details Oath Keepers’ ‘civil war’ timeline
It was just two days after the presidential election that his preferred candidate Donald Trump lost, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes fired off a text to members of his extremist group.
“We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” the text read.
Now, Rhodes and four others charged with seditious conspiracy stemming from the deadly 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol staged by Trump supporters are coming off the first week of their trial in federal court in Washington DC.
Seven other Oath Keepers pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges before the trial, which saw the prosecution reveal troubling new information about how long ago Rhodes’ group had resolved to keep Trump in the Oval Office at any cost.
Testimony on Tuesday from the government’s first witness – FBI agent Michael Palian – established that Rhodes had been encouraging resistance to a potential Joe Biden electoral college victory in the early hours of 4 November 2020, days before the major news networks had called the race in his favor.
“The left, including the Democratic party … seek our destruction,” Rhodes said through text messages. “We must defeat them … Even if one of them occupies the White House.”
By 7 November, the day news stations projected Biden had defeated Trump, Rhodes sent a group chat through the encrypted private messenger app, Signal, “What’s the plan? We need to roll,” the Washington Post reported.
He added: “I’m on my way to [D.C.] now, with my Oath Keepers tactical leaders for a possible DC op to do a leaders recon and make plans. I’m available to meet face to face.”
The group chat, Friends of Stone, included Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, though the latter has denied any prior knowledge of the Capitol attack which a bipartisan Senate report linked to at least seven deaths and has not been charged with any crime connected to the insurrection.
In arguably the most consequential reveal of the trial thus far, an Oath Keepers insider who testified Thursday claimed the group had begun plotting what he understood to be a coup during a virtual meeting with more than 100 members on 9 November, which took two hours.
The Oath Keepers West Virginia chapter leader Abdullah Rashid, a heavy equipment mechanic and US marine corps veteran, started recording the session because it sounded to him like the extremist group planned to go to war with the US government, the loosely affiliated antifascist movement known as “Antifa” for short, and the racial justice movement Black Lives Matter.
As Brandi Buchman of the Daily Kos noted, Rashid testified that – after he recorded the meeting – he reached out to Washington DC’s attorney general, Karl Racine, and the US Capitol police. In a November 2020 email to the Capitol police force, he called Rhodes a “wacko,” and on Thursday he told prosecutors that he thought what Rhodes was proposing was “crazy.”
Responding to questions about what he suspected were Rhodes’ aims for the January 6 attack, Rashid said, “It sounded like we were going to overthrow the US government and start shooting everybody, and beating up Antifa and beating up [Black Lives Matter]. That’s what I understood it to be.”
Rashid also provided a tip to the FBI, which he even resubmitted in March 2021, CNN reported. No one followed up his tip until after the Capitol attack, raising questions about whether authorities had blown a chance to prevent the uprising from happening.
In the recording, which was played in court on Tuesday, Rhodes repeatedly discussed putting pressure on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, a federal law that allows the president to deploy military forces domestically to perform the duties of civilian law enforcement. CNN reported that Rhodes also declared his willingness to die in a fight against Antifa protesters in order to facilitate Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act, CNN reported.
“I’m not going to micromanage you,” Rhodes said during the call, the Daily Kos reports. “The official position is if we’re going to go in complying with DC bullshit gun laws, we are not vulnerable to being charged with felonies.”
One of Rhodes’ co-defendants, Kelly Meggs, was heard on the call mentioning weapons that could skirt Washington DC’s stringent gun laws.
“Pepper spray is legal. Tasers are legal. And stun guns are legal,” Meggs said, adding it doesn’t hurt to have lead pipes.
The defense has argued that Rashid’s video recording doesn’t explicitly mention January 6, CNN reported, but rather refers to members attending the Million Maga March on 14 November in Washington DC. The prosecution countered that the Million Maga March – which refers to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan – hadn’t been scheduled by 9 November, the Daily Kos reported.
Attorneys for Oath Keepers members have argued their clients were simply developing a “quick reaction force” in response to fears about being met with violence by Antifa.
Palian testified that the FBI has not come across a person who unequivocally admitted they were planning to attack the Capitol on January 6.
A former leader of the Oath Keepers’ North Carolina chapter, army veteran John Zimmerman, testified Thursday that group members did form a quick reaction force for the Million Maga March at Arlington Cemetery, the New York Times reports, hiding in a van with at least a dozen assault-style rifles, sawed-off pool cues, and handguns. The group deployed quick reaction force teams to lie in wait at another December rally and again – from hotels in northern Virginia – on January 6.
Zimmerman’s testimony shed light on Rhodes’ fixation with Antifa, which allegedly drove his push to create private security details for his group at rallies before and during the Capitol attack. Zimmerman said he became alarmed over this fixation when Rhodes suggested dressing members up as elderly people or parents with children to see if Antifa would attack them without provocation after the Million Maga March, the New York Times reported
Palian also testified that another defendant, Thomas Caldwell, had talked with Rhodes about getting a boat, sitting in it during the Capitol attack, and serving with the group’s “quick reaction force,” the Daily Kos reported.
The prosecution produced photos and a receipt of a $670 double-barrel pistol made to look like a cellphone that Caldwell had. Palian also testified that Caldwell had planned to use his Berryville, Virginia, home as a basecamp for out-of-town Oath Keepers descending on Washington DC for the Capitol attack, even complaining to Rhodes that he’d have to get portable toilets.
Caldwell was not at the Capitol for January 6. His attorney has attempted to argue his role in the insurrection was insignificant and that he never paid dues as an official Oath Keepers member.
Meanwhile, prosecutors unsuccessfully asked Thursday for permission to introduce evidence about a “death list” written by Caldwell that named Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Freeman and her daughter Moss were subjects of a baseless voter fraud conspiracy circulated among Trump supporters.
The trial was expected to last several weeks more.