Comment Four days after the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes tried to tell President Donald Trump it wasn’t too late to use paramilitary groups to stay in power by force, according to testimony Wednesday in federal court. . If he hadn’t, the protesters “should have brought rifles” to Washington and “we could have done it right there and then,” Rhodes said during a taped meeting on Jan. 10, boasting that he would have killed the president. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D -California). Rhodes made the violent comments at a meeting in Texas with Jason Alpers, who described himself as a military veteran and co-founder of the Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG). This organization played a key role in spreading false claims about the 2020 election through misleading and inaccurate reporting about voting machine software. On the stand, Alpers said he had an “indirect” line to Trump’s “inner circle,” without elaborating. That apparent relationship is why Rhodes wanted them to meet, Alpers testified. He said he recorded the meeting to “provide information to President Trump.” What he got, he said, disturbed him enough that he eventually went to the FBI. Alpers took the stand in the sixth week of the trial of Rhodes and four others accused of participating in a seditious conspiracy against the US government. He was one of the last witnesses called by prosecutors who sought to prove that the Oath Keepers’ actions on Jan. 6 were only part of an effort to prevent by any means necessary the legal transition of presidential power. The Oath Keepers partner says he saw January 6 as a “Bastille-type” moment. It was him It was followed by an FBI agent who displayed firearms, knives and tactical gear Rhodes bought after Jan. 6 — worth more than $17,000, according to testimony — and read messages in which the former Army paratrooper urged his followers to prepare for civil war. Rhodes was hiding in Texas, according to prosecutors, when he met Alpers in an electronics store parking lot. Also present were Joshua James, an Oath Keeper who pleaded guilty, and Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer romantically linked to Rhodes. As he had said publicly before Jan. 6, Rhodes repeatedly said Trump should invoke the Sedition Act, which he believed would allow militia groups to prevent President Biden from taking office. Rhodes told Alpers on the recording that if Trump steps down “he and his family” would “die” because Biden would “turn the sedition law against us.” He compared the election to the overthrow of the Russian tsar in 1917, after which the entire royal family was massacred. Alpers testified that Rhodes wrote a similar message for Trump: “You have to use the Sedition Act and use the power of the President to stop him. And all of us veterans will support you, as will the vast majority of the military.” Rhodes argued that he was only supporting what he believed to be a legitimate order from the president. But in the recording, Rhodes indicated that he and his followers would act violently even if Trump did not give his approval. “Here’s the thing, we’re going to fight,” Rhodes writes. “We will not let them come and take our brothers. We will fight, the fight will be ours.” And had he known on Jan. 6 that Trump would never invoke the Sedition Act, Rhodes said, he would have gone further that day — including killing a Democratic leader. “If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just going to let himself be illegally removed, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes says in the recording. “We could have fixed it then and there. I’d hang the f——- Pelosi from the lamppost.” Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is currently hospitalized after being attacked by a man who officials say was trying to kill her. Rhodes, on the recording, also called the uprising “a good thing in the end” because it “showed the people that we have a spirit of resistance.” But he said that if Trump left office, “everyone who was on Capitol Hill” would be at risk of being charged with “felony murder … because somebody died.” SoRelle can be heard agreeing: “I know it’s going to happen.” Felony murder applies when the death results from the commission of another felony. In the recording, Alpers told Rhodes he didn’t think Trump would invoke the Sedition Act. He testified that while the law was discussed in “election fraud circles,” his impression was based on discussion in Trump’s “inner circle.” Emails released Wednesday by Trump’s lawyer, John Eastman, indicate the matter was discussed by people close to the president. On December 19, 2020, Eastman told an unidentified reporter to “get off that path” because it “would lead to a constitutional crisis.” Alpers said he did not deliver Rhodes’ words to Trump “because I didn’t agree with the message.” He also said he was concerned that being associated with these “extremist ideologies” would damage his “relationships and credibility”. Alpers told the Washington Post last year that as far as he knew, ASOG started the “election fraud program” after he left the company. In a podcast last year, a former ASOG employee named Josh Merritt said Alpers connected the group with Phil Waldron, who was serving in Afghanistan. “Alpers were psychological interventions. Waldron was involved in psychological operations,” Merritt said. Waldron, a retired colonel, went to the White House several times to share alleged evidence of election fraud. worked directly with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on legal challenges to the vote count and released a PowerPoint presentation before Jan. 6 arguing that Trump could use troops to confiscate ballots. Waldron did not respond to a request for comment. An ASOG report on software used in Antrim County, Mich., claimed to have found evidence of a sweeping vote-rigging conspiracy. The report’s central allegations were immediately dismissed by independent experts and Homeland Security officials, but Trump claimed it was “overwhelming evidence” of fraud that would have kept him in office for a second term, former Attorney General William P. Barr later told congressional investigators. . Alpers said he initially did nothing with the recording because he “didn’t want to get involved,” but that sometime in the spring of 2021 he met with federal law enforcement. “To call for a civil war on American soil and understanding, being a man who has been to war, right, that means there’s going to be blood in the streets where your family is,” he said. “It was at that point where I kind of take a step back and really wonder if pushing this on President Trump is for the best.” Four days after the meeting with Alpers, records show Rhodes told Oath Keepers leaders that “it is becoming sadly clear that President Trump will not take the decisive action that we have urged him to take.” He urged the group to delete all communications related to January 6 and to “unite” against “an illegal regime.” Texts read in court show other defendants reacting excitedly, discussing possible hiding places and weapons to be collected. Emma Brown and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
