Oath Keepers leader tells jury he never wanted his group in the Capitol on Jan. 6

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes said on Monday he was shocked to learn that his allies went “off-mission” and entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, telling jurors he only learned about it after the fact and never viewed disrupting Congress as a goal for his far-right group.

“I didn’t want them getting wrapped up into all the nonsense with Trump supporters,” Rhodes said under questioning from his attorneys. “My goal was to make sure that no one got wrapped up in that Charlie Foxtrot going on inside the Capitol.”

It was Rhodes’ most forceful rebuttal to the seditious conspiracy case prosecutors have been making against him for weeks. They have alleged that he helped orchestrate an “armed rebellion” against the incoming Biden administration, leading his group to Washington on Jan. 6 and assembling stockpiles of weapons nearby in case violence escalated. The goal, the Justice Department argued, was to keep Donald Trump in power, by force if necessary.

Prosecutors swung back Monday afternoon, pressing Rhodes on his repeated exhortations to his allies to prepare for a “bloody” battle against the government if Joe Biden were allowed to take office. Rhodes goaded his allies into a militant posture, helped organize their stockpile of weapons and rallied them to the Capitol amid the chaos, prosecutors noted.

“You and the Oath Keepers were prepared to take steps to alter or abolish this government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said.

Rhodes, though, said he viewed America as on the “eve” of battle — not in the midst of one. His warnings about impending civil war were about the distant future, he said, not for Jan. 6 itself.

“Were we prepared to walk the founder’s path?” Rhodes said. “Yes. I still hope the conflict will be avoided. But we have a government that steps outside the constitution, it puts you in a bad place.”

Rhodes bristled when asked by Rakoczy whether he bore responsibility for his followers’ actions on Jan. 6.

“I’m responsible for everything everybody does?” he shot back.

For the second straight day, the seditious conspiracy trial of the Oath Keepers turned into the Stewart Rhodes show. The loquacious Yale Law graduate at times grew agitated by Rakoczy’s questioning and repeatedly disputed her premise as she pressed him on his intentions. He attempted to flash humor, saying he needed to “go on a diet” after prosecutors displayed an unflattering side-profile image. He often morphed into an armchair law professor, describing his view of the Supreme Court’s “original jurisdiction,” the historical interpretation of the Insurrection Act, as well as his view of the definition of civil disobedience.

Rhodes opined about his distrust of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, which he said was “in part” due to his wife Elaine Chao’s family connections in China. He agreed that America remained on the “Founder’s path” — his shorthand for the road to civil war — but not one he said he intended to bring about on Jan. 6.

Rakoczy noted that Rhodes never warned fellow Oath Keepers to avoid the Capitol, after learning that rioters had breached police lines. In fact, he called them to meet him at the Capitol’s northeast corner.

Rhodes had primed his supporters for weeks, Rakoczy said, noting that if Trump didn’t call up the military to help him seize a second term, his supporters — including the Oath Keepers — would have to take matters into their own hands.

“You had been describing how we were on the brink of a war,” Rakoczy said. On Jan. 6, she noted, he looked upon the rioting crowd, compared it to the Revolutionary War “street fighting” and told his allies, “Next comes our Lexington.”

Rhodes spent the morning casting the Oath Keepers as a benevolent, apolitical force, responding to natural disasters and protecting business owners amid civil unrest — in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014 after the police shooting of Michael Brown and in Louisville after the police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

Rhodes contended that he spent the morning of Jan. 6 at a hotel, traveling to the Capitol only after he had heard that the barricades had been breached. He described having trouble communicating with allies due to poor cell service, and that he had particular concerns about his inability to reach Kelly Meggs, the Florida leader of the Oath Keepers and one of Rhodes’ codefendants.

“I didn’t know where they were,” Rhodes said.

Later that day, Rhodes said, Meggs informed him that he had brought his team into the Capitol, something Rhodes said he disagreed with and voiced his concerns about to others at the time.

Rhodes said that he learned only after Jan. 6 that another Oath Keeper – Alabama’s Joshua James, who had been guarding longtime Trump ally Roger Stone earlier on that day — had also taken a group inside the Capitol. James, he said, never mentioned it to him even though they dined together on the evening of Jan. 6.

Meggs’ attorney, Stan Woodward, questioned Rhodes about the claim that Meggs went “off-mission.”

“We disagree,” Woodward told U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who was considering whether to permit cross-examination by co-defendants’ attorneys.

Rhodes said under questioning from Woodward that “there was no plan to enter the building for any purpose” but agreed that there are “standing orders within Oath Keepers to render medical aid” to those in need.

Rhodes used much of his testimony to separate his desire for Trump to remain in power from the group’s presence in D.C.

He said more than 100 Oath Keepers had traveled to Washington to perform security details and escort Trump supporters from the Ellipse, near the White House, to the Capitol. But that work, he said, was distinct from his public calls on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and call up the Oath Keepers as a state-sanctioned militia, which he repeatedly said he believed would have been within Trump’s legal and constitutional authority.

When they questioned Rhodes, prosecutors indicated they would ask about his efforts to deliver that message to Trump in the weeks before Jan. 6. During discussion among the lawyers out of jurors’ earshot, they discussed FBI investigators’ interviews with an unidentified woman who donated to the Oath Keepers and had a son working at the White House. The FBI investigated evidence that Rhodes sought to pass messages to Trump through this contact only to learn that the woman never passed along his messages.