WASHINGTON — The Oath Keepers threatened a “bloody civil war” against a “puppet regime” if Joe Biden took the White House from Donald Trump, according to chat messages shown to jurors in the first Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trial.
“We are going to have a fight,” Stewart Rhodes, the militia group’s founder, said in a December 2020 message. “That can’t be avoided, but it’s better to have a fight now, while Trump is commander in chief then to wait till he is gone.”
The messages were presented by federal prosecutors Friday as evidence against Rhodes and four other defendants who are accused of sedition, or attacking the U.S. government. According to prosecutors, the messages show that the Oath Keepers came to the Capitol ready for violence.
