AFP: Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, is to be sentenced yesterday for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.
Prosecutors have asked Judge Amit Mehta to impose a 25-year prison sentence on Rhodes for plotting to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
Rhodes, 57, and Kelly Meggs, 53, leader of the Oath Keepers’ Florida chapter, were convicted by a Washington jury in November of the rarely pursued charge of seditious conspiracy.The 12-person jury acquitted three other members of the Oath Keepers of the sedition charge, but convicted them of lesser offenses such as obstructing an official proceeding.
Rhodes, an eyepatch-wearing former soldier and Yale law school graduate, and the four other group members were accused of plotting to keep Trump in power and overturn the results of the presidential election won by Biden.During a nearly two-week trial, prosecutors said the Oath Keepers “concocted a plan for an armed rebellion… plotting to oppose by force the government of the United States.”
More than 1,000 Trump supporters have been arrested for their roles in the assault on Congress, but most of them have faced less serious charges than those lodged against Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers.