2023-05-25 20:35:49
Stewart Rhodesthe founder of the far-right anti-government militia Oath Keepershas been sentenced this Thursday to 18 years in prison for his role in the storming the capitol on January 6, 2021. This is the harsher sentence imposed to date by that insurrection of supporters of Donald Trump, who tried to stop the certification of the victory of President Joe Biden. She is also the first one to be convicted of seditious conspiracy in this case, for which the Department of Justice has opened more than a thousand criminal cases.
Rhodes, 58, Army veteran and Yale law graduate who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009, was convicted in November with other defendants for sedition, who will also be sentenced in the coming days. Although he did not personally enter the Capitol, it was considered proven that hedevised a plot to organize an armed rebellion y avoid peaceful transition of power after Trump’s defeat, after which he began propagating conspiracy theories about a electoral fraud, non-existent, and to make calls that incited to prepare for a “armed rebellion”, a “civil war” and one “bloody revolution”.
The group saved a arsenal of weapons in hotels near the Capitol and Rhodes himself was in contact with Kelly Meggs, another militia leader who was on the ground and who has also been convicted and will be sentenced this Thursday.
“Will we have another January 6th?”
He Justice Amit Methawhich has handed down the sentence in a federal district court in Washington, has considered that Rhodes’ actions represent domestic terrorism. And before announcing the sentence, which has been below the 25 years requested by the prosecution, he has addressed Rhodes. “I dare say, and I have never said this to someone I have sentenced, that you represent a threat to our country and a danger to our Republic and for the very fabric of our democracy”, he told her. And he added: “All we hold our breath as an election approaches. We will have another january 6? It remains to be seen”.
“What we cannot have in any way is a group of citizens fomenting a revolution because they don’t like the outcome of an elections, because they did not believe that the law was being followed as it should”, the judge also stated, who responded to Rhodes when he assured, in his own statement at the hearing, that he is a “political prisoner”. He “he” Prepared to take up arms and foment a revolution. That’s what he did. not a political prisonerMr. Rhodes. He’s here because of his actions.”he has replied.
Rhodes, who has held since the founding of the Oath Keepers an insurrectionary vision that grants militia groups and individuals the constitutional right under the stoday’s amendment to violently oppose the government and calls for a rebellion against “tyranny”, has shown no regret for their actions. In fact, in an interview he gave four days ago from jail, he insisted on his idea that there is a “government persecution of those on the political right” that, he said, “is not going to stop until it is stopped.” He also spoke of the need for a “regime change”.
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Also this Thursday during the four-hour hearing, in which he has intervened for 20 minutes and has been compared to the Soviet dissident Aleksándr Solzhenitsyn and with the protagonist of Kafka’s novel ‘The process’, has doubled down on that message. “Like President Trump, my only crime is to oppose those who are destroying our countryyes”, he said. “I think that all of those accused of January 6 are political prisoners and we are all being excessively accused,” he denounced, warning that this “will make more people think, more than before, that this government is even more illegitimate”.
No one who did not assault a police officer during the assault on the Capitol had so far been sentenced to more than eight years in prison. And the toughest sentence before this Thursday had been a 14-year sentence for Peter Schwartz, who assaulted two officers and had a record of 38 prior convictions.
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