Oath Keepers leader says group didn’t plan to storm US Capitol
Far-right group’s Stewart Rhodes tells jurors ‘there was no plan to enter’ Capitol building on January 6 last year.
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes has told jurors there was no plan for members of his far-right group to attack the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, as he tries to clear his name in his seditious conspiracy trial.
Taking the stand in his own defence for a second day, Rhodes testified on Monday that he had no idea his followers were going to join the pro-Trump mob to storm the Capitol and he was upset after he found out that some did.
Rhodes said he believed it was stupid for any Oath Keepers to go into the Capitol. He insisted that was not their “mission”.
“There was no plan to enter the building for any purpose,” Rhodes testified.
Rhodes is on trial with four other defendants for what prosecutors have alleged was a plan to stage an armed rebellion to stop the transfer of presidential power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.
Prosecutors have tried to show that for the Oath Keepers, the riot was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but part of a serious, weekslong plot.
Rhodes’s defence is focused largely on the idea that his rhetoric was aimed at persuading Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president wide discretion to decide when military force is necessary and what qualifies as military force.
Rhodes told jurors he believed it would have been legal for Trump to invoke that act and call up a militia in response to what he believed was an “unconstitutional” and “invalid” election.
“All of my effort was on what Trump could do,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes did not make clear what he would have wanted a militia to do after being called up by Trump.
