Staff Report –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Stewart Rhodes, 58, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced by a federal judge on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges and the role he played in leading the mobilization of the pro-Trump insurrection and attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

His partner, Kelly Meggs, 54, of Dunnellon, Florida, the leader of the Florida chapter of the organization, was sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

The Rhodes sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, was the most severe penalty so far in the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack, and the first to be enhanced for fitting the legal definition of terrorism. It was also the first to have been given to any of the 10 members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group, the Proud Boys, who were convicted of sedition in connection with the events of Jan. 6.

For Rhodes, the sentence was the end of a tumultuous and unusual career that included Army service, a stint on Capitol Hill and a law degree from Yale. His role as the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader thrust him into the spotlight and will now send him to prison for what is likely to be the better part of his remaining days.

The sentences “reflect the grave threat the actions of these defendants posed to our democratic institutions,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in the Justice Department’s official announcement.

“The United States proved at trial that the Oath Keepers plotted for months to violently disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Garland said. “The Justice Department will continue to do everything in our power to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6th attack on our democracy.”

Rhodes and Meggs were found guilty on Nov. 29, 2022, following an eight-week trial and three days of deliberations. In addition to the seditious conspiracy charge, Rhodes was convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding and tampering with documents and proceedings. Meggs was also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging duties, and tampering with documents or proceedings.

“Today’s sentencings reflect the FBI’s commitment to do our part to hold accountable individuals who committed criminal acts on January 6, 2021, as well as those who plotted to interfere with the lawful transfer of power,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said. “We will continue to work with our partners to bring to justice those who violated our laws in connection with the siege on the U.S. Capitol.”

According to the government’s evidence, the Oath Keepers is a large but loosely organized collection of individuals that includes many police officers and members of the U.S. military, some of whom are associated with right-wing, anti-government militias.

Following the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, Rhodes, Meggs, and others began plotting to oppose, by force, the lawful transfer of presidential power. Beginning in late December 2020, via encrypted and private communications applications, Rhodes, Meggs, and others coordinated and planned to travel to Washington, D.C., on or around Jan. 6, 2021, the date of the certification of the electoral college vote.

“There have been few instances in our nation’s history when our fellow citizens have engaged in a seditious conspiracy — a conspiracy to use force to oppose the functioning of our government,” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves for the District of Columbia said. “More people were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the siege of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, than any other criminal event since the statute was enacted during the Civil War. Today’s sentencing affirms the rule of law and imposes substantial consequences on Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs who, together, conspired to violently attack our government and our democracy.”

The defendants also, collectively, employed a variety of manners and means, including organizing into teams that were prepared and willing to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington, D.C. They recruited members and affiliates, organized trainings to teach and learn paramilitary combat tactics, and brought paramilitary gear, weapons, and supplies – including knives, batons, camouflaged combat uniforms, tactical vests with plates, helmets, eye protection, and radio equipment – to the Capitol grounds.

They led the breach of the Capitol and attempted to take control of the Capitol grounds and building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent, hinder and delay the certification of the electoral college vote. They led using force against law enforcement officers while inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and continued to plot, after Jan. 6, 2021, to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and using websites, social media, text messaging and encrypted messaging applications to communicate with each other and others.

On Jan. 6, 2021, a large crowd began to gather outside the Capitol perimeter as the Joint Session of Congress got under way at 1 p.m. Crowd members eventually forced their way through, up, and over U.S. Capitol Police barricades and advanced to the building’s exterior façade. Shortly after 2 p.m., crowd members forced entry into the Capitol by breaking windows, ramming open doors, and assaulting Capitol police and other law enforcement officers.

At about this time, according to the government’s evidence, Rhodes entered the restricted area of the Capitol grounds and directed his followers to meet him at the Capitol.

At approximately 2:30 p.m., according to the government’s evidence, Meggs, along with other Oath Keepers and affiliates – many wearing paramilitary clothing and patches with the Oath Keepers name, logo, and insignia – marched in a “stack” formation up the east steps of the Capitol, joined a mob, and made their way into the Capitol. Rhodes remained outside, coordinating activities.

While certain Oath Keepers members and affiliates breached the Capitol grounds and building, others remained stationed just outside of the city in quick reaction force (QRF) teams. According to the government’s evidence, the QRF teams were prepared to rapidly transport firearms and other weapons into Washington, D.C., in support of operations aimed at using force to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power.

Rhodes was arrested on Jan. 13, 2022, in Texas. Meggs was arrested on Feb. 17, 2021, in Florida.

This verdict was first reported by The New York Times.

At a dramatic, nearly four-hour hearing, Judge Amit P. Mehta chided Rhodes for seeking for years through his leadership of the Oath Keepers to have American democracy “devolve into violence.”

“You, sir,” Judge Mehta went on, directly addressing the defendant, “present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.”

As the hearing opened, prosecutors urged Judge Mehta to sentence Rhodes to 25 years in prison, arguing that accountability was needed for the violence at the Capitol and that American democracy was on the line.

Kathryn L. Rakoczy, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, told Judge Mehta that Rhodes had been calling for attacks against the government for more than a decade and that his role in the Jan. 6 attack was part of a longstanding pattern.

The Oath Keepers leader, Rakoczy said, exploited his talents and influence to goad his followers into rejecting the results of the 2020 election and ultimately mobilized them into storming the Capitol in two separate military-style “stacks” in a violent effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in office.

“It is conduct that threatened — and continues to threaten — the rule of law in the United States,” she said.

Rakoczy also noted that Rhodes had shown no remorse for undermining the lawful transition of power and continued to advocate political violence. Just four days ago, she said, Rhodes gave an interview from jail, repeating the lie that the election had been marred by fraud and asserting that the government was “coming after those on the political right.”

“It’s not going to stop until it’s stopped,” Rhodes said during the interview, adding that the country needed “regime change.”

As if to prove the government’s point, Rhodes — in an orange prison smock and his trademark black eye patch — gave a defiant address to the court, blaming the news media for demonizing the Oath Keepers for leading the Capitol attack. He also compared himself to the Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and to the beleaguered main character in the Kafka novel “The Trial.”

“I am a political prisoner,” Rhodes said.

In court papers filed this month, prosecutors dwelled on the importance of severely punishing Rhodes and his subordinates, stating that the acceptance of political violence was on the rise in the United States and that lengthy prison terms were needed to serve as a deterrent against future unrest.

“As this court is well aware, the justice system’s reaction to Jan. 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether Jan. 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” the prosecutors wrote. “Left unchecked, this impulse threatens our democracy.”

In court on Thursday, prosecutors persuaded Judge Mehta to increase Rhodes’s sentence by arguing that his repeated calls for violence against the government and his plan to stage an arsenal of weapons outside Washington in case of an emergency on Jan. 6 should be punished as an act of terrorism.

“This wasn’t blowing up a building,” Rakoczy said. But “organizing an armed force” and advocating “bloody civil war” came “pretty close,” she said.

The government had asked to apply the terrorism enhancement in four previous Jan. 6 cases, but judges — including Judge Mehta — had denied the requests each time.

From the outset of the hearing, Rhodes’s lawyers — Phillip Linder and James L. Bright — were constrained in their efforts to ask for leniency, unable to fully claim that Rhodes was remorseful or no longer presented a threat to the government, knowing that his stemwinder statement to the court was coming.

Bright decided not to say anything. When Linder spoke, he simply said that the government had tried to make Rhodes “the face of Jan. 6,” but that figures like Trump were more responsible for the chaos and violence at the Capitol that day.

In the end, Judge Mehta said he had imposed a harsh sentence because seditious conspiracy was “among the most serious crimes an individual in America can commit.”

He also scolded Rhodes, telling him that he had not been prosecuted because of his political beliefs but rather because he had “prepared to take up arms and foment revolution” simply because he did not like the results of an election.

“That’s what you did,” Judge Mehta said. “You’re not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. You’re here because of your actions.”

Jeffrey S. Nestler, one of the prosecutors, opened Rhodes’s trial by telling the jury that in the weeks after Joe Biden won the election, the Oath Keepers leader and his subordinates “concocted a plan for an armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy”: the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

In closing the government’s case, Nestler declared that the Oath Keepers had plotted against Biden, ignoring both the law and the will of the voters, because they hated the results of the election.

At the trial, prosecutors showed the jury hundreds of encrypted text messages by Oath Keepers members, demonstrating that Rhodes and some of his followers were in thrall to outlandish fears that Chinese agents had infiltrated the U.S. government and that Biden — whom they called a “puppet” of the Chinese Communist Party — might cede control of the country to the United Nations.

Prosecutors also sought to demonstrate how throughout the post election period, Rhodes was desperate to contact Trump and persuade him to take extraordinary measures to maintain power.

In December 2020, for example, Rhodes posted an open letter on his website urging Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. He believed that the law, which is more than two centuries old, would give the president the power to call up militias like the Oath Keepers to suppress the “coup” — purportedly led by Biden and Kamala Harris, the incoming vice president — that was seeking to unseat him.

As part of the plot, prosecutors maintained, Rhodes placed a “quick reaction force” of heavily armed Oath Keepers at a Comfort Inn in Arlington County, Va., ready to rush their weapons into Washington if their compatriots at the Capitol needed them.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s National Security and Criminal Divisions are prosecuting the case. Valuable assistance was provided by numerous U.S. Attorneys’ Offices throughout the country. The case is being investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office with valuable assistance provided by numerous FBI offices throughout the country, including the Dallas, Cincinnati, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Richmond Field Offices.

In the 28 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,000 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 320 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

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