2023-05-26 23:26:24
02:30 PM
Stewart Rhodes, leader of the US far-right militias Oath Keepers, He was sentenced this Thursday to 18 years in prison for “sedition”the most serious sentence pronounced so far linked to the assault on the Capitol in 2021.
Rhodes was one of more than 1,000 people charged in the January 6, 2021 attack by a crowd harangued by then-President Donald Trump. The attackers aimed to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 election.
“You represent a persistent threat and danger to the country”, said federal judge Amit Mehta when justifying the severity of the sentence pronounced once morest the founder of Oath Keepers.
Read More: Four “ultra-rightists” were convicted of assaulting the US Capitol.
“The seditious conspiracy It is one of the most serious crimes an American can commit.”, he added.
The Oath Keepers participated, with an arsenal of weapons, in the assault on the Capitol carried out by supporters of then-President Trump.
“You are intelligent, charismatic and convincing and that is frankly what makes it dangerousMehta said, rejecting Rhodes’ claim that he was a “political prisoner.”
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The sentence fell short of the 25 years the government sought, though Mehta accepted the argument that the Oath Keepers’ plan to violently prevent Biden from becoming president was equated with terrorism.
Just before sentencing, Rhodes, wearing an eyepatch and dressed in his orange prisoner jumpsuitdefiantly defended his group and its actions in support of Trump.
“I am a political prisoner”he declared, comparing himself to the famous Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “My only crime is to oppose those who destroy our country“, He launched.
blame trump
But the possession of an armory by his group on the outskirts of the city and the use of combat gear in their organized advance towards the Capitol showed a well-oiled level of planning and preparation for violence.
Rhodes, 57, and Kelly Meggs, 53, leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, were convicted by a Washington jury in November on the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy.
Megs, who did enter the Capitol, received twelve years in prison.
In the same trial, three other members of Oath Keepers They were sentenced for obstructing an official proceedingHe, having forced the closure of Congress and forcing lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to take refuge in a safe place.
During the trial, prosecutors said that the Oath Keepers “they devised a plan for an armed rebellion (…) conspiring to forcibly oppose the United States government.”
Rhodes’ lawyers noted that he himself he never entered the Capitol building and that he did not urge others to do so.
But Mehta dismissed that argument as mitigation. Rhodes was unequivocally the leader of the group, she argued.
“He graduated from Yale Law and is a pretty smart guy,” added the judge. “He was the one giving the orders. (…) They were there for him”.
However, Rhodes’ lawyer, Phillip Linder, maintained that his client should not be held responsible for the attack on the Capitol and pointed the finger at Trump.
“I think what happened on January 6 was deplorable,” but Rhodes did not plan the uprising, he insisted.
“We need to see what caused this. (…) Who started on January 6?” Linder remarked. “He (for Rodes) was not the one who started that rhetoric that inflamed people.”
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