Federal prosecutors closed their case Thursday against five alleged leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, ending the initial phase of the first tumultuous conspiracy trial in more than a decade.   

  Over four weeks, government witnesses — including several FBI agents, U.S. Capitol police officers, current and former members of the Oath Keepers and a representative from Facebook who testified about social media messages celebrating violence — testified to support the Justice Department’s case that five defendants planned to stop the January 6, 2021, voter count.   

  According to prosecutors, defendants Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell were planning an armed uprising long before the U.S. Capitol uprising.   

  Members of the group attended several other rallies in D.C. as “dry runs,” prosecutors say, and took action when the moment finally presented itself on Jan. 6, going with the crowd to storm the Capitol.   

  All five alleged members of the Oath Keepers have pleaded not guilty and will present evidence in their defense in the coming weeks.  Some of the defendants have indicated they will testify in their own defense, including Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate who founded the far-right extremist group.   

  In presenting their case, prosecutors relied heavily on the group’s alleged chat messages on encrypted apps and their planning in the run-up to January 6 – which their leader Rhodes reportedly saw as a hard constitutional deadline to stop Joe Biden to be president.   

  Prosecutors have also presented several secretly recorded conversations in which Rhodes and other defendants allegedly discussed the election and warned of a “fight here on U.S. soil.”   

  Defense attorneys have shot down the idea that the group never had a specific plan on Jan. 6 and that Rhodes never instructed them to enter the Capitol.   

  Although a government associate, former Oath Keeper Graydon Young, called the plan “tacit,” no one testified that the group had an organized, coordinated plan for what happened that day.   

  The second argument relied on by the defense is twofold: The Oath Keepers were not violent during the riot and never called upon the so-called “Rapid Response Force” they had set up at a Virginia hotel with an alleged arsenal of firearms.  The defendants did little more than other people charged only with misdemeanors, defense attorneys say.  The only difference is their “rhetoric and bomb”.