“Sir, you represent a continuing threat and peril to this country, to the republic, and to the very fabric of our democracy. » With these solemn words, Judge Amit Mehta addressed Stewart Rhodes on Thursday, May 25. The magistrate pronounced the exemplary sentence – eighteen years in prison – against the founder of the Oath Keepers, an extremist and racist armed militia, on the front line of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. This is an important and long-awaited step in the very long hunt for the participants in this attempt to violently interrupt the democratic transition between two presidents.
In total, nearly a thousand people have been charged at the federal level, including 650 convicted. But the Rhodes case is the heaviest to date, the most symbolic also for the Ministry of Justice, which has chosen to prosecute him for “seditious conspiracy”. The 57-year-old Oath Keepers founder appeared in court as a “political prisoner”citing The trialby Franz Kafka, or the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “My only crime is to oppose those who destroy the country”he claimed.
The public prosecutor managed to convince the judge to hold against him the count of terrorism, even if the sentence requested – twenty-five years – was reduced to eighteen years. “It was not about blowing up a building”argued Kathryn Rakoczy, one of the representatives of the prosecution, while noting that“organize an armed force” and plead for “a bloody civil war” comes close, she says.
In December 2020, just after the formal vote of the electors in favor of Joe Biden, winner of the presidential election, Stewart Rhodes published an open letter on his site, calling on Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. This two-century-old law would have allowed him to mobilize the National Guard and armed militias to counter a supposed coup attempt. The Oath Keepers leader named Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as enemies of the people. “If you renounce to act while you are in officehe wrote, we the people will have to wage a bloody war against these two illegitimate puppets of China. »
Guilt by association
On January 6, Stewart Rhodes and his men, dressed in commando style, concealed a large number of weapons in hotels near the center of Washington. Then they converged on the Capitol. The leader himself did not enter the building, but all were in radio contact. The other members paved the way for the crowd of supporters of Donald Trump to force the meager police roadblocks, break the windows, force the entrance doors. Kelly Meggs, one of Stewart Rhodes’ assistants, was sentenced Thursday to twelve years in prison.
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