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After nearly three full days of deliberations, a federal jury in the District of Columbia reached a verdict in the landmark trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants for their role in the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes and Kelly Meggs were convicted on seditious conspiracy charges, while Kenneth Harrelson and Jessica Watkins were found guilty of conspiring to prevent an officer from discharging any duties. All five, including the final defendant, Thomas Caldwell, were found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding—the act of certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. While a victory for the Department of Justice in their ongoing efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the events of Jan. 6, this should not be viewed as a panacea in the fight against anti-government extremism.
The Department of Justice's sprawling prosecution has resulted in over 920 arrests to date, and has secured convictions or pleas in nearly 500 of those cases. However, the indictment of Stewart Rhodes in January 2022 was undoubtedly the most significant public step taken by the DOJ in the nearly two-year-long investigation. The indictment was headlined by the use of federal seditious conspiracy charges—the first time this charge had been brought since the unsuccessful prosecution of members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan in 2010.
While the DOJ's prosecutorial strategy for the Jan. 6 investigation has long centered around individuals who had breached the Capitol or engaged in acts of violence against law enforcement and members of the media on restricted Capitol grounds, the charges against Rhodes focus instead on his leadership of his right-wing militia group and the outsized role he played in the conspiracy to mobilize the Oath Keepers to D.C. in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
This conspiracy was laid out in granular detail by federal prosecutors in the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in the District of Columbia throughout a nearly two-month trial. At the center of these Oath Keepers' conspiracies, whether sedition or obstruction, sat one man: Stewart Rhodes. As trial evidence demonstrated, Rhodes used his position as founder, president, and lifetime chairman of the board of the Oath Keepers to publicly and privately call for his followers and supporters to travel to Washington, D.C. in furtherance of the seditious conspiracy.
Despite attempts by Rhodes' attorneys—as well as Rhodes himself during his own testimony—it is clear that the jury was not convinced by the argument that Rhodes' co-defendants and other charged Oath Keepers were merely bad apples or rogue members disobeying orders. Rhodes' conviction underscores the reality that the Oath Keepers served as an extension of his will, an embodiment of his desire for legitimacy for his anti-government militia.
As Rhodes and his co-conspirators now await sentencing, a second seditious conspiracy trial, with four Oath Keepers as defendants, moves forward. In the backdrop of these proceedings, Oath Keepers chapters remain active—although perhaps somewhat more paranoid. Some chapters publicly distanced themselves from Rhodes and the national organization, yet remain centered around the core concepts that have given the group popular appeal: fighting back against a government they perceive as tyrannical, preparing for impending civil unrest, and ultimately an armed conflict between the group and its enemies.
Further, the continued support for the Oath Keepers and their anti-government beliefs at the state and federal level, as well as within law enforcement and the military, poses an ongoing threat. Analysis by the Anti-Defamation League on a 2021 leak of 38,000 names on the Oath Keepers membership list found 81 individuals holding or running for public office in 2022, 373 active law enforcement members, and a further 117 individuals serving in the U.S. military.
As an organization that explicitly and openly sought to recruit members of the military, law enforcement, and first responders, this should come as no surprise. However, despite this explicitly stated objective, inaction by the federal government has allowed the group to establish footholds everywhere they want them. They have been able to recruit and radicalize those with positions of authority, individuals with military training and combat experience, and even those who are actively serving this country. The reality is clear: these individuals cannot simultaneously hold true to their oaths to the Constitution and to an anti-government militia whose leader has been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
While the long-term organizational future of the national Oath Keepers organization is uncertain with Rhodes' seditious conspiracy conviction, it stands to reason that the elements of the group which remain true to Rhodes' ideological vision will seek to recede even further from the public view. However, in an organization that has been endlessly preoccupied with a federal government it views as unconstitutional, the federal investigations into key leadership within the group in the aftermath of Jan. 6 will likely only further strengthen the resolve of its rank and file. Even as the group's national presence diminishes in the short term—after being banned from Facebook and Twitter in 2020, and whose national website remains offline—it should be expected that other, more amorphous, or local movements will seek to fill the void left in their wake.
Recent years have highlighted the risk of decentralized anti-government movements like the Boogaloo, while the Three Percenters ideology has remained a persistent presence within the militia sphere. As experts in anti-government extremism Sam Jackson and Amy Cooter have both made clear in the aftermath of the jury verdict, we should not confuse the conviction of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes with a strategic victory against the Patriot/Militia movement in the United States.
Jon Lewis is a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, where he studies domestic violent extremism and homegrown violent extremism, with a specialization in the evolution of white supremacist and anti-government movements in the United States and federal responses to the threat of accelerationism. He is also the Director of Policy Research at the Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC). Twitter: @Jon_Lewis27
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
