Oath Keepers sedition trial: Secret recordings played to jury reveal plans for Jan 6 ‘fight’

The attorney for defendant Thomas Caldwell has repeatedly suggested that he was wrongly targeted in connection with the Oath Keepers scheme. Mr Caldwell did not enter the Capitol on 6 January, attorneys and the FBI have clarified.

But his attorney also asked FBI agent Michael Palian how a warrant was obtained for Mr Caldwell’s home in Virginia.

Mr Palian said Mr Caldwell “talked about continuing operations and taking this to other states, raiding state Capitols” and made “a number of violent statements about killing politicians.”

An attorney for defendant Kelly Meggs asked FBI agent Michael Palian about messages Stewart Rhodes sent to the group about the Insurrection Act, which would allow the president to deploy military and National Guard to suppress civil unrest or insurrection.

One person asked whether Donald Trump invoking the act would protect militia members from “putting down leftists.”

Mr Rhodes replied: “Only if he calls us up as the militia.”

Prosecutors have previously pointed to a speech Mr Rhodes gave in December 2020 calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, saying that “If he does not do it now, while he is commander in chief, we are going to have to do it ourselves later in a much more desperate, much more bloody war.”

“According to Rhodes, using those words, the Insurrection Act, would give him and his followers plausible deniability,” assistant US attorney Jeffrey Nestler said on Monday.

“Rhodes said using those words would give them legal cover,” he said in his opening statement.

The jury has been sent home for the evening, and the trial will resume on Thursday, with a break tomorrow in observation of Yom Kippur. There will be a half day on Friday.

David Fischer, who is representing defendant Thomas Caldwell, asked Judge Amit Mehta to admonish the court after people laughed during his cross-examination of FBI special agent Michael Palian.

The judge himself chuckled at the request.

“There were a few moments of levity during your cross-examination,” he added. “You’re not giving yourself enough comedic credit.”

A US Army veteran and Yale Law School graduate, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes cycled through various ideologies and conspiracy theories before he became obsessed with Donald Trump, The Independent’s Richard Hall writes.

He is charged with organising of the most serious attempts to overthrow the government in modern history.

Members of the far-right anti-government Oath Keepers grouo “did not go to the Capitol to defend or help,” according to assistant US Attorney Jeff Nestler. “They went to attack.”

Stewart Rhodes and the group “concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy,” he said in his opening arguments in the group’s seditious conspiracy trial in Washington DC on Monday.

In his testimony, FBI special agent Michael Palian shared details about the search of the home of Thomas Caldwell, one of the defendants and a retired US Navy lieutenant commander.

At his Virginia home, agents recovered what was titled a “death list” containing the names of two Georgia election workers – Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss – who were also targeted by the former president and right-wing activists over baseless allegations of vote manipulation in the 2020 election.

But the jury in the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial will not be seeing that evidence.

Judge Amit Mehta determined in August that while the list is “fairly shocking,” it is also “highly prejudicial and highly inflammatory” and could pose a “real danger” of “inflaming the jury”.

In their testimony to the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, those same two election workers revealed the depth of abuse they endured, part of a wave of harassment and threats against people who help run the nation’s elections:

During a Tuesday talk before the Milwaukee Rotary Club, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin downplayed the extent of armed threats during the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, despite the numerous protesters who were found with guns and other weapons.

But, he added, “some of the protesters did teach us all how you can use flog poles, that kind of stuff, as weapons.”

A secretly recorded video of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes from November 2020 shows the group preparing for a “fight” in Washington DC, fuelled by baseless allegations that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, according to federal prosecutors.

“We’re not getting out of this without a fight. There’s going to be a fight,” Mr Rhodes said in the video shown to the courtroom on 4 October.

“But let’s just do it smart and let’s do it while President Trump is still commander in chief,” he said.

“If the fight comes, let the fight come. Let antifa go, if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that. Let the fight start there. That would give Trump what he needs.”

He also told the group “don’t make it easy for them to pop you with a conspiracy charge.”

Federal prosecutors have hinged seditious conspiracy charges on arguments that the group plotted for weeks to forcefully disrupt the joint session of Congress on 6 January, 2021.

FBI agent Michael Palian told the court on 3 October that the federal law enforcement agency received a tip in March 2021 about a potential armed fight in Washington DC.

A covertly recorded video shown to the court appars to show Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes telling members of the group in November to pre

The “increasingly alarmed follower” shared it with law enforcement, federal prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler said on Monday.

But the tip, which was sent to federal agents on 25 November, 202, was apparently ignored – until it was sent a second time in March 2021, two months after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

“We’ve got to be in DC,” Mr Rhodes says in the video, according to court filings. “You’ve got to make sure that [Donald Trump] knows that you are willing to die, to fight for this country.”

Mr Rhodes had hoped that then-President Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, activating military to combat unrest, presumably against his political enemies.

“If he does that, then DC gun laws won’t matter,” Mr Rhodes said. “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed if they have to.”