You see .......there is no end to stupid fuckers ......imagine thinking a president is going to do this when he is furnished with agents to protect him .....these are delusional .......redneck men...... with low self worth ........and probably unhappily married .......or some sort of power boner.....i mean FFS who knows there was no note or promise written on contract .....i get there idea it seems good but you have to remember......i get patriotism but i certainly trust np pne with my freedom .....i like donald .......but i would not have gone there to the capital because ....there is no outcome except prison ....... I have n affilliation to anything except myself .....no one else pays my fucking bills ....or gives me money .....so fuck them
The Oath Keepers will tell a jury they really believed Donald Trump would turn them into his own, personal militia on Jan. 6
Lawyers for Elmer Stewart Rhodes will tell jurors the far-right group believed President Trump would federalize them.
They will argue at their Sept. 28 seditious conspiracy trial that this, not sedition, was their lawful reason to be at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
They'll also claim the Insurrection Act is so vaguely written, Trump legally could have used it to make them a federal militia.
When nine accused leaders of the Oath Keepers go on trial for seditious conspiracy in Washington, DC, this fall, jurors in the government's first big, Jan. 6 showcase trial will hear a defense argument that sounds little short of crazy.
They'll be told that the far-right extremists believed President Donald Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act as they gathered at the Capitol, 100 strong in their camo-colored tactical gear — and turn them into his own, ultra-loyal federal militia.
Their fantasy mission? To "Stop the Steal," "Defend the President," and "Defeat the Deep State," according to since-deleted rhetoric from their website. A defiant Trump would officially be their commander in chief.
"Do NOT concede, and do NOT wait until January 20, 2021," Inauguration Day. "Strike now," Oath Keepers leader and founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes urged in an open letter to Trump on Dec. 14, 2020.
"You must call us up and command us."
James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, jokes that most people will laugh to learn the Oath Keepers thought they'd ever be a federal militia. "They believe what?" Bright imagines them thinking. "These guys are fucking crazy."
But he says he plans nonetheless to convince jurors that the pro-Trump, anti-government group actually had two lawful — and non-seditious — reasons to be at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Reason one: They were an invited security force for rally planners and participants, including Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, Latinos for Trump and Virginia Women for Trump.
Reason two: They were awaiting Trump's orders.
When those orders failed to come, Rhodes' lawyers will argue, the Oath Keepers left the Capitol. They had dinner at Olive Garden, and then collected the weapons and provisions they'd stashed — at the ready but never used — in their rooms at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, VA. Then they went home.
"I just want to fight," federal prosecutors say Rhodes complained after failing to get Trump on the phone that night, like some extremist Pinocchio with a thwarted dream of becoming a real militiaman.
Prosecutors, will, of course, tell jurors a different tale.
The feds argue in court papers that the Oath Keepers' private chat messages show sedition was their real motive.
The chats are full of references to a Civil War against "the usurpers" — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — and to using force to oppose the transfer of presidential power, which is the very definition of seditious conspiracy.
The feds also argue that Rhodes oversaw two military-style "stacks" or formations, of Oath Keepers who forcibly breached the Capitol — and that the real reason the group left DC was that the FBI had begun making arrests.
A far fetched fantasy
"I don't necessarily understand the mindset of it," says Bright, whose private practice is based in Dallas.
"It's not my world view," says Bright, speaking to Insider this week about the Oath Keepers' strategy for a 5-to-6 week trial scheduled to begin Sept. 28.
"But the evidence does exist that these individuals believed in it," he said of the group's hope that Trump would use the Insurrection Act to summon them into federal service against an imagined Biden-Harris "coup."
"They believed that if it was invoked, it was legal," Bright said. "And it would have been legal, arguably."
Which leads to perhaps the most eyebrow-raising part of the Oath Keepers' planned defense.
The Insurrection Act is so broadly written — leaving words like "insurrection," "militia" and "militias of the state" without clear definition — that Trump actually could have federalized the Oath Keepers, Rhodes' lawyers will tell jurors.
"It's so farfetched, and yet it's legal," at least until a court stepped in and held otherwise, Bright believes.
Experts in the Insurrection Act, on the other hand, say no. It's just farfetched.
"While I understand where they got the idea from, what they're saying is mostly nonsense," says Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School.
Yes, Nunn concedes, there is a separate, archaic federal statute, 10 USC 246 — drafted in 1792, the same year as the original Insurrection Act — which still includes as part of a larger definition of militia, "all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age ... and
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