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In closing arguments Monday, lawyers for three of the five Oath Keepers associates facing trial for seditious conspiracy on Jan. 6, 2021, the Capitol riots accused federal prosecutors of tampering with evidence by omitting key messages and exaggerating his participation in the attack.
Prosecutors responded by urging jurors to convict Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants, citing “overwhelming” evidence “right before your eyes.”
“Make no mistake, he [Rhodes] wanted to start a civil war,” said Assistant United States Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler. “They wanted to attack what they saw as an illegitimate government. Their own statements prove the government’s case.”
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta presented the case to the jury after eight weeks of trial, 46 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits. The jury will begin deliberations Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., retire for the rest of the Thanksgiving week if a verdict is not reached, and resume deliberations next week.
Federals: Oath Keepers sought the “violent overthrow” of the government
Defense attorney Bradford Geyer cast client Kenneth Harrelson as a follower, not a leader on Jan. 6. The jury did not see Harrelson’s communications, not because he deleted them, as prosecutors alleged, but because he was not involved in the planning, Geyer argued. .
“It’s no longer scary words,” Geyer said, “which is bad enough. Now you’re being asked to sentence based on what he might have been thinking.”
He said Harrelson was apolitical, only agreed to travel to DC on January 4, 2021, and never had any intention of entering the Capitol, though he did so as part of a stack of Oath Keepers alongside east of the building.
Geyer and Jonathan Crisp, the attorney for defendant Jessica Watkins, criticized how prosecutors presented videos and evidence, calling “government manipulation or deception.” He noted that prosecutors showed group chat discussions on the Signal app, used by Rhodes and many other members before and during Jan. 6, but omitted certain posts and falsely implied that Watkins responded to the messages who did not answer.
Watkins admitted on the stand that he entered the Capitol and apologized for it.
Crisp noted that prosecutors never asked Watkins, during his testimony, whether there was “a plan to stop certification. A plan to bring down the government. … He was never asked about that.”
He said prosecutors “will put anything in front of you, to lie and twist it. If they go to that extreme because of their narrative, because of their context, they have no right to any credibility.”
Crisp and David Fischer, an attorney for Virginia resident Thomas Caldwell, said their clients believed that by 2:20 p.m. on Jan. 6, when members of Congress were evacuated, the confirmation was complete. Therefore, Watkins and Caldwell had no intention of disrupting the electoral college count.
“Can you stop something that has already been stopped?” Crisp asked. “How do you kill a corpse?” But the counting of the polling station had only been postponed and restarted about six hours later.
Nestler replied that Congress was not dead. He argued that Watkins and Caldwell were communicating with people outside the city and knew the count had not been completed.
Fischer noted that Caldwell had no communication with Rhodes after mid-November. Fischer also said the government initially accused Caldwell of being a leader of the Oath Keepers who broke into the Capitol, charges that prosecutors later dropped. Caldwell was not at any of the Oath Keepers’ phone chats or meetings, and only communicated with a group of North Carolina Oath Keepers that had split from Rhodes, Fischer said.
Caldwell is accused of coordinating a “Quick Reaction Force” with a weapons arsenal based out of an Arlington hotel, but “why would the Oath Keepers have a non-Oath Keeper coordinating the QRF?” Fisher he asked. “Mr. Caldwell had no contact with Stewart Rhodes. He had no contact with Oath Keepers on January 6th. none Is it the QRF coordinator? How is it going?”