Oath Keepers founder Rhodes asks for leniency in sedition sentence
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Attorneys for Stewart Rhodes urged a judge to sentence him to far less than the 25-year prison term sought by federal prosecutors for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack — asking for a penalty of time served or roughly 16 months behind bars — citing his military service and his founding and leadership of the right-wing extremist group Oath Keepers.
In a Monday morning court filing, the attorneys emphasized that Rhodes volunteered for the Army in June 1983, completed Airborne school and was honorably discharged after suffering a spinal fracture in a low-altitude night jump in 1986. They emphasized his formation of the Oath Keepers in 2009, saying the group provided hurricane and other emergency relief, security in cities experiencing rioting, and protective details for VIPs during President Donald Trump’s rallies after the 2020 presidential election.
“If the history and character of a man is to be judged by what he creates and how that organization functions within and for the benefit of society, then it is imperative that the court give great deference to Mr. Rhodes for the 12 years of service and dedication of the Oath Keepers, as evinced through the organization’s history of community involvement and volunteerism in times of natural disaster and civil unrest,” Rhodes’s attorneys Phillip A. Linder and James Lee Bright wrote.
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The defense filing came after a Friday evening memo by prosecutors asking a federal judge to sentence Rhodes to 25 years in prison and eight followers to at least 10 years behind bars, in the first punishments to be handed down to defendants convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Capitol riot.
Rhodes and the others face sentencing starting later this month. Rhodes was arrested in January 2022 and will have served roughly 16 months at that point.
Rhodes’s defense said that any claims that Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were “white nationalist” or “racist” were baseless attempts to further a political narrative. Repeating Rhodes’s denial at trial that he committed any seditious plotting before Jan. 6, his defense said that he never called for “direct prevention” of the lawful transfer of power from Trump to President Biden, but only for Trump to invoke the Civil War-era Insurrection Act to call forth private militia members to stay in power, and for militia groups to deny and resist Biden’s administration after his swearing-in. That argument was unsuccessful at the trial.
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“Assisting fellow citizens in times of natural disasters, protecting them when under siege from rioters and upholding the United States Constitution are not ‘extreme’ ideals, they are American ideals,” Bright and Linder wrote, asking U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta not for any specific term but to impose a sentence “sufficient but no greater than necessary” to achieve the law’s goals for sentencing.
Rhodes, a top deputy and four others were found guilty at trials in November and January of plotting to unleash political violence to prevent the Biden presidency, stashing a small arsenal of firearms at hotels in Northern Virginia before converging that afternoon at the East Capitol steps in military-style tactical gear. Three other co-defendants were convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election, among other crimes. Both top offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison, but prosecutors asked the court to stack sentences for Rhodes, citing among other things an enhanced terrorism penalty for actions intended to intimidate or coerce the government.
Prosecutors called for “swift and severe” punishment for Rhodes, saying his group’s actions went far beyond the scope and magnitude of any other Jan. 6 defendants sentenced so far. They said Rhodes exploited his public influence in the anti-government extremist movement and mobilized people for political violence after “spreading doubt about the presidential election and turning others against the government” because their preferred candidate did not win.
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Rhodes and his co-defendants were the first accused of seditious conspiracy in the Capitol breach and the first to face trial and be convicted on any conspiracy charge in the massive Jan. 6 investigation, which has resulted in more than 1,000 arrests and more than 650 convictions so far.
Mehta, Rhodes’s sentencing judge, has handed down the two longest punishments to Jan. 6 defendants so far, both for assaulting police: 14 years for Peter Schwartz of Kentucky, who attacked multiple officers and who has a long criminal history of 38 convictions, including multiple domestic and police assaults; and 10 years for Timothy Webster, a former New York City police officer who attacked a Capitol Police officer with a metal flagpole.
Rhodes’s attorneys said only those two men have been sentenced to more than eight years in Jan. 6 cases, attaching a 54-page government chart of sentences to a 16-page defense filing. About 200 of roughly 450 people sentenced have received no jail time, and more than half of the roughly 250 people who have been sentenced to prison received terms of less than two months.
Of 110 people sentenced for felonies, about 76 who pleaded guilty have been sentenced to an average of 33 months, and about 34 who were convicted at trial have been sentenced to an average of 44 months in prison, according to a separate Washington Post analysis.
Tom Jackman contributed to this report.
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Source: The Washington Post
