Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for orchestrating a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol to keep President Donald Trump in power after losing the 2020 election, was on stage at Trump’s rally in Las Vegas this weekend. Rhodes appeared in news photos among people standing behind Trump as the president spoke.
Rhodes was among 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys whose sentences were commuted by Trump on his first day in office, when the president also pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Rhodes had been serving an 18-year sentence.
Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, had repeatedly threatened bloody civil war to keep Trump in power after the 2020 election. He urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act against “domestic traitors.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, the group had stockpiled weapons and stationed a “quick reactionary force” across the river in Virginia. A group of Oath Keepers in a military-style “stack” formation worked their way through the mob and forced their way into the Capitol, with some attacking Capitol Police and others hunting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After retreating from the Capitol, Rhodes called someone he believed had access to Trump, urging them to have Trump call on the Oath Keepers and others to fight to keep him in power. That evening, Rhodes sent a message to a Signal chat group saying, “Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what's coming.”
Rhodes launched Oath Keepers after the election of President Barack Obama. Sam Jackson, author of a book about the Oath Keepers, wrote shortly before the 2020 election that since its founding, the Oath Keepers had “urged its members and supporters to arm themselves and get ready for war.” Right Wing Watch reported in 2017 that Rhodes responded to a church shooting by urging his supporters to prepare for “a wave of left wing terrorism” that could “lead to a full blown civil war.” Back in 2015, Rhodes called for Sen. John McCain to be hanged.
When Rhodes was arrested in 2022, his estranged wife urged the judge not to release him before trial, detailing years of abuse she said Rhodes had inflicted on her and her children. Family members of both the attackers and police officers who were brutalized are reportedly fearful of retaliation from people Trump ordered released and from their supporters. And experts believe Trump’s order could embolden violent extremists.
Vice President J.D. Vance, who recently said that “obviously” those who attacked Capitol Police officers should not be pardoned, is now singing a different tune, and defending Trump’s mass pardons. All Senate Democrats are co-sponsoring a resolution condemning pardons of the insurrectionists who attacked police.
The judge who oversaw Rhodes’ trial has banned Rhodes from entering Washington, D.C without court permission, though Trump officials are seeking to have that restriction overturned. Judge Ahmit Meta had called the prospect of a pardon “frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country.”