Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes warned former President Donald Trump in a jailhouse interview that he’s “going to be found guilty” in the cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith because the justice system is rigged.
The imprisoned white nationalist leader suggested that he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 18 years behind bars for seditious conspiracy over his role in leading the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“They’re going to do the same thing to President Trump that they did to me,” Rhodes told the Washington Times newspaper from a Washington, D.C., prison.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017.
Rhodes starkly warned Trump that the far right-wing movement has been splintered by aggressive law enforcement action.
“You’re going to get railroaded. You’re going to be found guilty if you try to go to trial,” he said. “Everyone’s been demoralized and more likely to take a plea deal and agree to test a lie against President Trump.”
He accused liberal-leaning federal prosecutors of bearing down on witnesses with threats of life imprisonment if they do not flip against MAGA leaders like himself and Trump.
“That’s what’s going to happen to President Trump,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy, becoming the first person to land behind bars for that Civil War-era crime in nearly three decades.
In messages to Oath Keepers and other right-wingers, Rhodes promised a “bloody” civil war and “insurrection” if President Biden took the White House.
Federal prosecutors successfully showed that Rhodes plotted the Oath Keepers’ role in the attack on the Capitol in the weeks after Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election
Rhodes was sentenced last November to 18 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. His is the longest sentence handed down for the assault on the Capitol. He plans to appeal
Trump has already been charged with mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Smith is also probing the former president’s role in directing a plot to overturn the 2020 elections, which culminated in the bloody Jan. 6 attack.
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