Oath Keeper’s Lawyer: “He Meant No Harm That Day”

NPR reports:

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four other members of the far-right group tried to change history and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler told jurors hearing the first seditious conspiracy trial.

Rhodes never entered the building on Jan. 6, 2021, but he was photographed on the Capitol grounds “surveying” his troops like a battlefield general, the government said.

Lawyers for Rhodes asked the jury to keep an open mind and hold the government to its burden of proof. Attorney Phillip Linder said the Oath Keepers had traveled to Washington to provide security for events in early January 2021. “Stewart Rhodes meant no harm to the Capitol that day,” Linder said.

CNN reports:

The Justice Department began its opening statement with the accusation that the defendants sought to “stop by any means necessary” the lawful transfer of presidential power, “including taking up arms against the United States government.”

Nestler started with a reference to the “core democratic custom of the routine” transfer of power, which Nestler said stretched back to the time of George Washington. “These defendants tried to change that history. They concocted a plan for armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy,” Nestler said.

He said the defendants descended on DC to attack “not just the Capitol, not just our government, not just DC, but our country itself.”

The New York Times reports:

The proceeding, which is expected to last four to six weeks, will be both a primer on the inner workings of the Oath Keepers and a kind of test case for the sedition conspiracy charge. It is the most serious count the government has brought so far against any of the nearly 900 people charged in the Capitol assault.

During the trial, prosecutors intend to use Mr. Rhodes’s own words — in virtual meetings, letters to his members and encrypted text messages — to show how he fiercely opposed Mr. Biden’s victory in November and became increasingly convinced that his own organization would have to work to keep Mr. Trump from losing power.

Pretty remarkable that the Oath Keepers’ opening statement was that they did not intend to do anything illegal but were simply waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act so that they could overthrow the republic with a veneer of legality https://t.co/7BEbGUVArG

— Drew McKevitt (@drewmckevitt) October 3, 2022