Prosecutors detail Oath Keepers’ mounting frustration with Trump as Jan. 6 approached

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, grew increasingly frustrated before Jan. 6, 2021 that Donald Trump had not taken even more extreme measures to seize a second term.

Messages displayed by prosecutors Thursday showed Rhodes — who littered his voluminous text messages with a stew of conspiracy theories — venting his disappointment with Trump’s refusal to invoke the Insurrection Act, a move he believed would permit the Oath Keepers to take up arms to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

Rhodes repeatedly exhorted his Oath Keeper brethren in the weeks before Jan. 6 to prepare to engage in a bloody battle if Trump refused to act, the messages reveal.

“Either Trump gets off his ass and uses the insurrection Act to defeat the ChiCom puppet coup or we will have to rise up in insurrection (rebellion) against the ChiCom puppet Biden,” Rhodes wrote in a Dec. 20, 2020 message. “Take your pick.”

Those messages, prosecutors say, reveal Rhodes' state of mind before he led Oath Keepers in a seditious conspiracy to forcibly prevent Biden from taking power. Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers leaders are facing the conspiracy charges for their part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Though Rhodes didn’t go into the building, he roamed the outskirts while dozens of allies entered — including some who were hunting for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence, prosecutors say. The group had staged a massive arsenal of firearms just outside of Washington, D.C. in anticipation of violence, the government contends.

Oath Keepers defense attorneys have contended that despite the tough talk in private messages, the group was primarily in Washington D.C. to act as security details for VIPs at a pro-Trump rally, and had no plan to enter the Capitol. Their firearms were legally stowed at a hotel in Arlington, Va., and were intended to be deployed only if street violence escalated or Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.

But prosecutors have used testimony in the third week of the Oath Keepers trial to poke holes in that defense. Rhodes’ pre-Jan. 6 messages to his allies — on multiple Signal chats, text message chains and recorded meetings — described the group as prepared to battle the federal government even if Trump refused to back them. And Rhodes saw the trip to D.C. on Jan. 6 as the theater for that fight.

Pro-Trump rallies were “getting kinda old,” he said.

“They don’t give a shit how many show up and wave a sign, pray or yell. They won't fear us until we come with rifles in hand,” he wrote on Dec. 29 to a group of five allies, including Kellye SoRelle, a girlfriend who Rhodes has also claimed was the group’s attorney. “Only reason to go is so Trump knows we support him in taking Reg gloves off and kickin ass.”

Rhodes is on trial with four other co-defendants, Ohio’s Jessica Watkins, Virginia’s Thomas Caldwell, Florida’s Kelly Meggs and Florida’s Kenneth Harrelson. Prosecutors spent Thursday’s session detailing the group’s movements, with dozens of others, to the Capitol from Trump’s rally near the White House.

As they marched, Rhodes and SoRelle roamed the edges of the Capitol and directed his co-defendants about where to go. Just under an hour before they arrived, Rhodes began receiving Signal messages from associates suggesting that the Capitol was being “stormed” by the pro-Trump mob.

When one of those associates raised concerns about Trump supporters being part of a breach on the Capitol, SoRelle replied on Rhodes’ behalf, saying that “We are acting like the founding fathers. Can’t stand down. Per Stewart and I concur.”

As he waited for other Oath Keepers to arrive at the Capitol, Rhodes continued venting about Trump and Pence. “Now it’s nut cuttin time. Does Trump have balls or not? We’re about to find out,” he wrote to one of his text chains.

When one Oath Keeper asked Rhodes if the crowd was potentially an anti-Trump crowd in disguise, Rhodes assured the group that they were genuine Trump supporters.