Days after the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes tried to get a message to then-President Donald Trump urging him to fight to stay in office and “save democracy,” according to trial. Wednesday. Rhodes, who is on trial for conspiracy to riot in the attack, said in his message, sent through an intermediary, that the Jurors would support the Republican president if he invoked the Insurrection Act and called them out as a militia. The message never reached Trump. The go-between — a Texas software developer and military veteran who testified he had an indirect way to reach the president — was taken aback by this and went to the FBI. “This is asking for civil war on American soil … this means blood will be spilled in the streets where your families are,” Jason Alpers told jurors. He decided not to pass on Rhodes’ words. “It would have wrapped me up in agreeing with that ideology in some way, which I didn’t.” Jurors also heard a recording Alpers made of his meeting with Rhodes in a Dallas-area parking lot, in which Oath Keepers leaders said “we should have brought rifles,” referring to the Capitol Hill riot. The group did have a large cache of weapons in a hotel room in nearby Virginia, but did not use them that day. The Alpers testified as prosecutors wrapped up their case against Rhodes and four associates in the most serious case yet to go to trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors have tried to show that Rhodes continued to plan to stop the transfer of presidential power even after the Capitol revolt, which delayed the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory. Alpers’ connection to Trump is unclear, and he did not specify how he might have gotten the message. Alpers went to the FBI a few months later with the recording of his mid-January 2021 meeting with Rhodes. The two men had a mutual acquaintance, and Alpers agreed to meet with the leader of the anti-government group to possibly deliver a message to Trump. He met Rhodes with a group of supporters in an electronics store parking lot in the Dallas area. Alpers recorded the encounter with a thumb recorder to protect himself and ensure he had an accurate depiction of the message, he said. After speaking with Alpers, Rhodes wrote a message on Alpers’ phone for the president. In it, Rhodes implored Trump to invoke the Sedition Act and promised that Jurors would support him if he did. “You have to use the Sedition Act and use the power of the presidency to stop it. All of us veterans will support you,” Rhodes wrote. If Trump did not act, Rhodes warned that Trump and his children would “die in prison.” He urged Trump to “go down in history saving democracy” and not “surrender to the enemies.” At the meeting, Rhodes expressed his disappointment with the president and his new acquaintance. “If he’s not going to do the right thing and just let himself be illegally removed, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said, according to the recording of the meeting. “We should have fixed it right then and there. I would hang Pelosi from the lamppost,” Rhodes said, referring to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Rhodes’ lawyers said their client did not commit a seditious conspiracy because he believed Trump was going to invoke the Sedition Act and call in the Oaths as a militia to quell what Rhodes saw as a coup by Democrats. The Sedition Act gives presidents broad power to call out the military and decide what form that force will take. Trump invoked it at other times in his presidency, but never did. Rhodes’ lawyers argued that their client was simply pressuring a president to use a law. During Alpers’ cross-examination on the stand, defense attorneys tried to present the message as another bombastic way to call on an elected official to invoke the law. Alpers also acknowledged that he did not immediately turn over the recording to the FBI, saying he initially did not want to get involved. Rhodes and his co-defendants are the first of hundreds of people arrested in the Capitol riot to stand trial for conspiracy to riot, a rare Civil War-era charge that carries up to 20 years behind bars. The stakes are high for the US Justice Department, which last secured such a conviction in a trial nearly 30 years ago, and plans to try two more groups on the charge later this year. On trial with Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, is Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers. Kenneth Harrelson, another Florida Oath Keeper; Thomas Caldwell, a retired US Navy intelligence officer from Virginia. and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group. They face several other charges besides seditious conspiracy.
