Posted on Feb 15, 2022
How Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes went from ballroom dancing to sedition charges
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It was a bright cold day in November, just a few days after Joe Biden had been declared the next president of the United States, and a few thousand people gathered in Washington DC to protest what they believed was a stolen election.
Donald Trump’s campaign to undermine the results of the vote he lost had only just begun, and the idea had not yet gained widespread popularity. These were the die-hards, the true believers: the Proud Boys, Boogaloos and the Oath Keepers.
The latter of those groups was hard to miss in the crowd that day. The Oath Keepers, one of the largest anti-government groups in the US today, claims in its ranks tens of thousands of former law enforcement officials and military veterans. I found them milling around in full military fatigues and green hats in view of the US Capitol building. Standing among them dressed all in black, and wearing his distinctive eye patch, was the group’s founder, 56-year-old Stewart Rhodes.
Donald Trump’s campaign to undermine the results of the vote he lost had only just begun, and the idea had not yet gained widespread popularity. These were the die-hards, the true believers: the Proud Boys, Boogaloos and the Oath Keepers.
The latter of those groups was hard to miss in the crowd that day. The Oath Keepers, one of the largest anti-government groups in the US today, claims in its ranks tens of thousands of former law enforcement officials and military veterans. I found them milling around in full military fatigues and green hats in view of the US Capitol building. Standing among them dressed all in black, and wearing his distinctive eye patch, was the group’s founder, 56-year-old Stewart Rhodes.
How Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes went from ballroom dancing to sedition charges
Posted from independent.co.uk
Oath Keepers
Conspiracy Theories
Washington
Election 2020
Government
Posted 2 y ago
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Interesting article on a right wing mental case that sucked up everything trump had to say.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."“It was stolen. There was massive fraud. They could not win clean, so they stole it,” he told me when I asked him to explain his concerns about the election. “It was like 10 million extra votes, and yet he still lost? We know it’s a bunch of crap. They stole the ballot in multiple ways.”
I had heard the same script of conspiracy theories from many Trump supporters in the aftermath of the election. Unlike Rhodes, however, most of those people didn’t have thousands of armed militia members under their command. And so I asked him what a stolen election meant for his armed organisation, whose members proclaim to be protectors of the constitution.
“What that means is that everything that comes out of his mouth will be considered just not of any force or effect. Anything he signs into law we won’t recognise as being legitimate, and it will be very much like the founding fathers, we’ll end up nullifying and resisting it,” he said.
And what does “resisting it” mean, I asked?
“Well when it comes time to enforce it we will defend ourselves against the enforcement,” he replied.
I went away that day wondering how serious Rhodes was about insurrection. Much had been written about the threat posed by armed groups like the Oath Keepers and the role they might play in post-election violence, but talking about overthrowing the government was one thing, doing it is quite another.
According to the FBI, Rhodes was deadly serious. At the very moment we spoke, he had already begun planning to violently interrupt the democratic process.
Rhodes was arrested on January 13, just over a year after the attack on the US Capitol, along with 10 other alleged co-conspirators. He was charged with seditious conspiracy for an alleged plot to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force,” according to prosecutors, which began just days after the 2020 election.
The arrest of Rhodes was seen as a key turning point in the investigation into the Capitol attack, for which more than 700 people have been arrested. The charges against Rhodes and his fellow Oath Keepers were the first targets of that investigation to face sedition charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
If proven, the charges against him would represent one of the most organised and serious efforts to overthrow the US government in modern history."...
..."“It was stolen. There was massive fraud. They could not win clean, so they stole it,” he told me when I asked him to explain his concerns about the election. “It was like 10 million extra votes, and yet he still lost? We know it’s a bunch of crap. They stole the ballot in multiple ways.”
I had heard the same script of conspiracy theories from many Trump supporters in the aftermath of the election. Unlike Rhodes, however, most of those people didn’t have thousands of armed militia members under their command. And so I asked him what a stolen election meant for his armed organisation, whose members proclaim to be protectors of the constitution.
“What that means is that everything that comes out of his mouth will be considered just not of any force or effect. Anything he signs into law we won’t recognise as being legitimate, and it will be very much like the founding fathers, we’ll end up nullifying and resisting it,” he said.
And what does “resisting it” mean, I asked?
“Well when it comes time to enforce it we will defend ourselves against the enforcement,” he replied.
I went away that day wondering how serious Rhodes was about insurrection. Much had been written about the threat posed by armed groups like the Oath Keepers and the role they might play in post-election violence, but talking about overthrowing the government was one thing, doing it is quite another.
According to the FBI, Rhodes was deadly serious. At the very moment we spoke, he had already begun planning to violently interrupt the democratic process.
Rhodes was arrested on January 13, just over a year after the attack on the US Capitol, along with 10 other alleged co-conspirators. He was charged with seditious conspiracy for an alleged plot to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force,” according to prosecutors, which began just days after the 2020 election.
The arrest of Rhodes was seen as a key turning point in the investigation into the Capitol attack, for which more than 700 people have been arrested. The charges against Rhodes and his fellow Oath Keepers were the first targets of that investigation to face sedition charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
If proven, the charges against him would represent one of the most organised and serious efforts to overthrow the US government in modern history."...
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