WASHINGTON — Stewart Rhodes never went into the U.S. Capitol building with other protesters on Jan. 6, but he is among a group of people facing the most serious charges to emerge from that day in 2021: seditious conspiracy.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agree that Rhodes wasn’t among the people who broke windows, attacked Capitol police and stole property from the meeting halls of Congress. But the Yale Law School graduate and founder of the Oath Keepers extremist group called for a “massively bloody revolution” ahead of the protest, according to the government.
The U.S. government will seek to cast Rhodes as ringleader in a plot to keep Joe Biden from his lawful election as president. Prosecutors allege Rhodes led a conspiracy that started with calls for Oath Keepers to reject the election outcome, stoked ideas of “a civil war,” and ended with members of the far-right group breaching the building and engaging in acts of harm to property.
