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

Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, testitifed to the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack earlier this summer.

“We’ve gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen, because the potential has been there from the start,” he said.

“I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring if a president that’s willing to try to instill and encourage to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil,” he added. “Regardless of the human impact.”

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and four other defendants face seditious conspiracy charges tied to the January 6 attack.

Thomas Caldwell, a retired US Navy lieutenant commander, has argued he was not a member of the group, though he hosted a meeting of Oath Keepers members at his home and helped plan a “quick reaction force” with a weapons and supply cache in Virginia before the Capitol attack, accordin to prosecutors.

Kelly Meggs, a leader of the group’s Florida chapter, allegedly spoke with Mr Rhodes moments before the group joined the mob entering the Capitol. Mr Meggs also allegedly asked the group “who is willing to die?” and said he planned a “killing spree” including Nancy Pelosi, prosecutors said.

Jessica Watkins of Ohio and Kenneth Harrelson, also of Florida, are also among the five defendants. Both are accused of helping organise and joining a military-like “stack” that entered the Capitol.

The attorney for the Oath Keepers had contact with a White House aide in the weeks leading up to the January 6 attack.

Kelly SoRelle allegedly exchanged text messages with Andrew Giuliani, a Trump White House official, in the days between the November 2020 election and the pro-Trump riot on 6 January, 2021.

Ms SoRelle was also recently arrested and charged in connection with the attack.

Messages sent by Stewart Rhodes to members of the Oath Keepers and others are key to federal prosecutors arguments to the jury that the group spent weeks coordinating a plan to disrupt a joint session of Congress on 6 January, 2021.

On 7 November, 2020, when election analysts and media organisations declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election, Mr Rhodes texted two groups on the encrypted chat att Signal: “Old-Leadership” and “Friends of Stone,” a reference to Roger Stone, who was allegedly a member of the group.

“The final defense is us and our rifles,” Mr Rhodes told Friends of Stone. “Trump has a duty to stand, but so far, her [sic] hasn’t. As Roger Stone said.”

He added: “Trump has one last chance right now to stand. But he will need us and our rifles too. But will he finally act? … So will you step up and push Trump to FINALLY take decisive action? That’s what we must do now. And then if he still refuses to do his duty, we will still have to do ours. And we will.”

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 on Tuesday 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.”

Federal prosecutors have previously pointed to a speech Mr Rhodes gave in December 2020 calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

“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,” Mr Rhodes allegedly said at the time.

“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.

More than 800 people have been arrested in connection with the Capitol attack.

But the indictment of Stewart Rhodes and his alleged co-conspirators charges them under a rarely used provision of law regarding treason against the US.

The provision details “Seditious Conspiracy” – committed when “two or more persons” conspire to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States” by force, or “seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof”.

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg explains:

The trial will resume on Thursday.

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