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Days after the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes drafted a message to then-President Donald Trump warning of dire consequences if he does not take more drastic action to overturn the 2020 election and remain in charge. .
“If you don’t, then Biden/Kamala will turn all that power to you, your family and all of us. You and your family will be imprisoned and killed,” Rhodes wrote. “You and your children will die in prison.”
The message, in which Rhodes implored Trump to invoke the Sedition Act, was ultimately not delivered. But it emerged as evidence Wednesday in the trial of Rhodes and four other members of the far-right group Oath Keepers who are charged with conspiracy to riot in connection with the Jan. 6 attack.
Prosecutors presented the message as they questioned Jason Alpers, the owner of a software development company, who met with Rhodes on January 10, 2021 in Texas. Alpers testified that he recorded the encounter with a “thumb-type recording device,” which he had purchased himself at a computer store.
On cross-examination, Alpers said he was not working for a law enforcement agency when he made the recording. An Army veteran who said he once worked in “special operations and psychological operations,” Alpers said he contacted the FBI only after the Jan. 6 attack and his meeting with Rhodes.
In court, prosecutors played audio from Alpers’ recording of Rhodes calling for civil war immediately after the Capitol attack.
“There’s a fight coming, I’m not fucking living on my knees, no fucking. … We’re just the tip of the iceberg. There’s millions of others who feel the same way about this shit we’re doing,” Rhodes said in the recording.
Rhodes added that his “only regret” about Jan. 6 was the lack of a more lethal weapon.
“We could have made it right there and then,” Rhodes said on the recording.
Rhodes and four other members of the Oath Keepers — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — watched the testimony inside the courtroom Wednesday, where jurors are hearing prosecutors’ claims they planned to violently oppose her peaceful transfer. power. During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Oath Keepers store weapons at a hotel outside Washington, D.C., for so-called “quick reaction forces” that could be called to the nation’s capital.
Alpers testified that he had connections to Trump’s inner circle and, in early 2021, could send a message to the then-president “indirectly.” During his meeting with Rhodes, Alpers said he had the Oath Keepers founder type a message intended for Trump on his phone so he could “clearly put his thoughts on a document.”
“It was clearly his thoughts,” Alpers testified Wednesday.
In that draft message, Rhodes tried to tell Trump that he “must do as Lincoln did.”
“Arrested congressmen, state legislators and issued a warrant for SCOTUS Chief Justice Taney. Take the administration as Washington would… Go down in history as the savior of the Republic, not the man who delivered it,” Rhodes wrote, according to with the evidence presented by the prosecutors.
“I’m here for you and all my men. We’ll come to your aid if you need us. Army and police. So will your millions of supporters,” Rhodes added.
Alpers said he did not relay Rhodes’ advice to Trump “because I didn’t agree with the message.”
Federal prosecutors are expected to present their case against Rhodes and four other members of the Oath Keepers on Wednesday. At the start of the trial, Rhodes’ attorney told jurors that the Oath Keepers founder planned to testify in his own defense.
