Huge news: Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes convicted of seditious conspiracy. As a journalist, I’ve covered Oath Keepers since 2009, recounted in Wingnuts. As a historian, I can tell you that seditious conspiracy convictions are incredibly rare. And in this case deserved.
— John Avlon (@JohnAvlon) November 29, 2022
It's the most significant verdict yet in the Justice Department's sprawling investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Rhodes, Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson will remain jailed pending sentencing. Caldwell will remain on release until sentencing.https://t.co/AX1oe4WfKk
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 29, 2022
Today's verdicts in the Oath Keeper trial were a big win for the Justice Department.
The jury carefully considered the evidence and did not return guilty verdicts across the board. But they will end up being sentenced for *all* their conduct despite some acquittals. pic.twitter.com/cyrSRKhLQY
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) November 30, 2022
The biggest factor: DOJ is proving it can secure unanimous verdicts from DC juries against the ring-leaders. This is real road-testing of the government's evidence — all the Signal chats and texts and emails and conference call audio recordings. And jurors are voting guilty.
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) November 29, 2022
Here's a handsomer version of that Oath Keeper Verdict Chart prepared by my @lawfareblog colleagues. https://t.co/kMX7c5KACi https://t.co/59XNvQcLFe pic.twitter.com/RwKtHWszyS
— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) November 30, 2022
Except that ‘just following orders’ notoriously has a bad track record:
Stewart Rhodes took the stand and his testimony was quite bizarre.
He presented himself as a constitutional scholar and testified that he urged Trump to invoke the insurrection act.
The only sensible defense would have been the opposite: He thought he was following orders. https://t.co/2zRlnEcXhA
— Teri Kanefield (@Teri_Kanefield) November 29, 2022
Accountability for what happened on January 6th matters. But the politicians who urged the insurrection with their lies hide behind their positions to avoid their accountability. While they did not storm the Capitol their role was no less consequential. https://t.co/Wdm7Trrbid
— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) November 29, 2022
It’s worth noting that while Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy, three others were not (but convicted of other charges). As I’ve said before, the legal bar for SC is very high (i.e., unlikely to ensnare Trump unless there is more evidence) https://t.co/q5JPvPFD1W
— @[email protected] (@AshaRangappa_) November 29, 2022
Nine of the insurrectionists we sued have pled guilty to charges from the DOJ. With Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes’ and 4 others’ convictions today, 14 of our defendants have been criminally convicted.
We look forward to continuing our case with this mounting evidence. https://t.co/W16dYYChDL
— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) November 29, 2022
The jury disagreed. pic.twitter.com/7b5EP5VWCu
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) November 29, 2022
Nota bene: Mr. Nichols is being sarcastic here:
Those poor insurrections couldn't even get a fair shake in court, because…well, you know. pic.twitter.com/WYnYfpSvdF
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 30, 2022
Goodbye, Stewart Rhodes, you seditious conspirator and the first far-right lunatic to hit me with online-abuse campaign.
IN 2007.
This justice is worth waiting for, but the evidence of Rhodes's capacity for white nationalist crime has been in plain sight for a long, long time. https://t.co/vSjDVmQuS7
— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) November 29, 2022
steve g
Speaking on behalf of millions of Americans: fuck that guy.
Redshift
Rhodes has to stay in jail during appeals. Good.
Danielx
A Yale Law graduate going to the big house? Say it ain’t so!
opiejeanne
It’s been snowing since 9 this morning, and our power is out now. Not sure if it’s because of wind or the snow. That means that our heater isn’t working now, but we have the cats to keep us warm in bed tonight.
My computer has a really good battery and I’m using my phone as a hotspot, but that may not last. if the phones go down too.
Ruckus
@steve g:
No thanks, I’d rather see him behind bars. Besides he fucked himself.
David 🦃The Establishment🥧 Koch
bunch of oafs
Ruckus
@Danielx:
I wonder what happened to his intelligence between getting into Yale and becoming politically insane? Was he snacking on rat poison? Ramming his head into a wall at a full bore run – repeatedly? Or is he just so far conservative that he thinks the only way to be is criminal?
Oh and BTW, I stayed on twit to see how it would go and I think someone was throwing shovels full on the grave today. I still check my account although I’m down to once a day now and my feed was chock full of ads and commercial posts, which have never shown up on my feed prior. Never, ever. And they were minor ads, nothing that I saw seemed national. I wonder if elon is selling ad space at a very low price, trying to get back as much of the $44 billion he threw into that now utter waste of electrons?
sab
Calouste
@Ruckus: Since when does getting into an Ivy League school (or Oxbridge) gives you immunity against going politically insane? Cruz, Jindal, DeSantis, Cotton, Hawley, etc., etc., etc. The list is very long.
Ruckus
@Calouste:
Never. It’s just still amazing to see someone so massively waste the time and energy to actually attend college and learn absolute shit.
IOW I didn’t know there are actual class about learning to be an absolute disaster of stupidly insane crap. What do they call that degree, Dumbshit al Mode?
sab
@Calouste: Ivy League or Oxbridge shows you are politucally wrong. Unattached and naive or just stupid, or evilly vile.
sab
My college, a fine institution in the midwest, did teach us to think. My education was excellent. Snear all you want at colleges. Mine was first rate.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ruckus: He just has to keep going till January, when the new Congress under the disciplined hand of Kevin whatsis passes laws ordering Apple and other big advertisers to spend all their advertising budgets on Twitter. For Freedom.
David 🦃The Establishment🥧 Koch
I wonder who’s financing these aholes. It’s not as if they have real jobs.
different-church-lady
It’s getting to the point where you can’t even try to violently overthrow the government without being convicted of trying to violently overthrow the government.
Amir Khalid
@sab:
Didn’t Barack Obama go to Harvard Law?
Matt McIrvin
Rhodes’ argument may have been aimed at getting pardoned or commuted by Trump if he ever becomes President again.
Anne Laurie
Other a-holes, mostly. ‘Donations’ from fellow OafKreepers, or quiet back-alley subsidies from kleptocrats who don’t want their personal resumes spoiled.
Rhodes’ wife supported him for many years, IIRC, even working at a strip club while he ‘studied the political system’. Once she finally broke free of that relationship, he started (upscaled) begging for money from sympathetic second-amendment, sovereign-citizen marks. There are strong suspicions that he worked his ‘Oath Keeper’ persona to start collecting from professional mischief-makers, but of course there would be such rumors even if you assume that the Mercers / Peter Thiel / Putin wouldn’t bother paying for an influencer whose help they could get for nothing.
It’s not a dignified lifestyle, but it can be quite profitable. Look at the Ron Paul foundation, now well into its second generation… or even the LaRouche gang.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
I rather expect President-again Trump (God forbid) to issue a blanket pardon to everyone convicted of an insurrection-related crime.
piratedan
@Anne Laurie: there’s a huge dark money infrastructure out there with the Leonard Leo types, to Vladdy Baby and all of those Petrocrats looking to undermine Democracy. I would imagine that for loons like the Oath Keepers, that they serve as viable shock troops for a number of causes if they all serve the same ultimate purpose, which is someone else makes the rules instead of all of us make the rules. I imagine that Citizens United happened for a reason and one of the main ones is to hide the depth of all of these financial resources and how there’s a LOT of folks who have a beachhead established against anti-Democratic institutions…
In a way, I imagine TFG as a right wing Cyrus from the Warriors…. we have the Christian Nationalists standing toe to toe with the anti-abortionists, who are right next to the Q Nuts, who are blithely ignoring the Chinese, Iranians and Russians, while they may all hate or even loathe each other, they’ve embraced common cause against Democracy… all they have to do is take over one part of the Government at a time, secure their turf because in their mind, its all THEIR turf.
Frank Wilhoit
@Ruckus:
Basic neuro-linguistic programming. If you say something often enough, you will start to believe it.
Amir Khalid
@Ruckus:
I suspect that quite a few high-profile ad buyers have curtailed their ad spend at Twitter, and if Elon complains about it they will happily tell him to go fuck himself.
zhena gogolia
@sab: That’s a pretty broad brush. I beg to differ.
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
Rhodes got a degree from Yale Law School. Plenty of dummies with rich alum parents get into Harvard, Yale, etc. as undergrads. And from all I’ve heard, once you’re in, it’s hard not to come out with a Bachelor’s degree.
Family connections may still help someone get into Yale Law, but more on the level of being one of the people whose undergrad records were strong enough to get in who got in, rather than one of those whose records were strong enough but there wasn’t room for. And then of course law school requires real work; you can’t just coast for three years and come out with a J.D. degree.
So going this far into Crazy-Land is a much more impressive achievement than it would have been for someone who merely got an Ivy undergrad degree.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
The law degree hurt him. He presented himself as a constitutional scholar and said he had urged Trump to invoke the insurrection act. He basically confessed to insurrection.
Too “smart” to keep his mouth shut. There’s a lot of people like that.
Elizabelle
And so begins the re-education of Stewart Rhodes. It will be even more expensive than his first go round. The campus grounds are not going to be as accommodating.
Helps a lot that the insurrection took place here, quite honestly, given the jury pool you will draw. Not whack jobs, and a lot of well educated people who can function in an urban setting. A lot of people with common sense and a sense of civic duty , too.
Would suspect jury nullification or a usurping renegade juror could be a real issue elsewhere, in the red state backwaters.
Of course, these weasels are taking their crusade to the blue states. So: learn up, weasels.
lowtechcyclist
No question, he dug his hole deeper there at trial. Brilliant lawyering!
In other good news, Stephen Miller, the most horrible person in the Trump Administration other than Trump himself, testified before the January 6 grand jury yesterday.
Denali
It is such a relief to see justice brought to these traitors. The press has not given this trial the attention it deserves. Americans need to know about it.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@lowtechcyclist: Yale law school has no grades, though – it’s just pass fail. That’s because it’s the explicit non-Harvard & the non- Columbia, and needs something to make a good student prefer to live in New Haven. They get away with it because the school is less than half the size of Columbia & they attract mostly wanna be academics, who will study anyhow.
the problem with a student like this loser, though, is that he’s crazy. An indulgent administration would coddle him & that got him through, only to create an unemployable graduate who couldn’t hack it as a lawyer – which is apparently exactly what happened. Then he discovered wingnut welfare, and the rest is history.
the irony is that he’ll probably be at his best in prison – a crack pot jailhouse lawyer who will spend his sentence filing creative bullshit appeals for all his fellow inmates.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Elizabelle: “Of course, these weasels are taking their crusade to the blue states. So: learn up, weasels.”
Hooray! Weasel-Stomping Day comes early this year!
artem1s
a bit OT – but election denying related – GQPer insanity is at work in Cochise County AZ. Very red county has refused to certify its 2022 election count. I think it’s just more election misinformation BS. But the results could help the R-AG candidate win their race. But would mean the Dem candidate for the House seat in the district would win. There are 47K (mostly R) voters that Republicans are tying to disenfranchise while Democrats are suing to have their votes counted. But both sides dontchaknow.
https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/elections/decision/think-arizonas-elections-are-over-not-so-fast-heres-why-mondays-big-day/75-fa130866-e3d0-42ea-98ea-0ff305eb428a
Elizabelle
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
OMG, that’s a good point. LOL.
Elizabelle
@Snarki, child of Loki: Whoa, that one is an earworm. Even though only could watch about 25 seconds. LOL.
Jackals: beware.
opiejeanne
@sab: Hillary and Bill went to Yale. My niece got a full ride to Yale, and she is none of the things you attributed to the Ivies. Let’s not be smearing people with generalizations like that.
StringOnAStick
@sab: We have Consumer Cellular and we like it. We are having to get new Simm cards because our iPhones as currently set up won’t work in Canada and we will be there for a ski trip starting new week, but it was easy to deal with that and we’ll have them tomorrow.
Dadadadadadada
@Amir Khalid: I don’t expect that. The insurrectionists were useful idiots whose usefulness is all used up, and therefore TFG will not give a damn about them.
It’s also extremely unlikely that TFG will ever be president again, so this is likely a moot point.
Dadadadadadada
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: For some reason I severely doubt that he’ll ever lift a finger for his fellow inmates.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I think that many of those high profile ad buyers already have discussed this with elon and told him exactly what you suggested….