The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice.

We’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well.

Worse than this miscarriage of justice is the despicable attempt by the prosecutor in the case to label Hodgkins – who has no criminal record and was accused of no violent crime – a “terrorist.”

As journalist Michael Tracey recently wrote, Special Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky declared Hodgkins a “terrorist” in the court proceedings not for committing any terrorist act, not for any act of violence, not even for imagining a terrorist act.

Sedky wrote in her sentencing memo, “The Government … recognizes that Hodgkins did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” She added, “we concede that Mr. Hodgkins is not under the legal definition a domestic terrorist.”

Yet Hodgkins should be considered a terrorist because the actions he took – entering the Senate to take a photo of himself – occurred during an event that the court is “framing…in the context of terrorism.”

That goes beyond a slippery slope. He is not a terrorist because he committed a terrorist act, but because somehow the “context” of his actions was, in her words, “imperiling democracy.”

In other words, Hodgkins deserved enhanced punishment because he committed a thought crime. The judge on the case, Randolph D. Moss, admitted as much. In carrying a Trump flag into the Senate, he said, Hodgkins was, “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.”

As Tracey pointed out, while eight months in prison is a ridiculously long sentence for standing on the floor of the “People’s House” and taking a photograph, it is also a ridiculously short sentence for a terrorist. If Hodgkins is really a terrorist, shouldn’t he be sent away for longer than eight months?

The purpose of the Soviet show trials was to create an enemy that the public could collectively join in hating and blaming for all the failures of the system. The purpose was to turn one part of the population against the other part of the population and demand they be “cancelled.” And it worked very well…for awhile.

In a recent article, libertarian author Jim Bovard quoted from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago about how average people turned out to demand "justice" for the state's designated “political” enemies: “There were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even school-children). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: ‘Death! Death! Death!’”

While we are not quite there yet, we are moving in that direction. Americans being sent to prison not for what they did, but for what they believe? Does that sound like the kind of America we really want to live in?

While many Biden backers are enjoying seeing the hammer come down on pro-Trump, non-violent protesters, they should take note: the kind of totalitarian “justice” system they are cheering on will soon be coming for them. It always does.

I write all the time but sometimes I can’t reach the things that are really important. The ideas fly around my brain in inchoate fashion but I lack the authorial and analytic chops to put them into words that have the power to convey to others my deepest concerns about what’s happening.

Thankfully, John Hayward doesn’t have that problem — or, at least, he doesn’t have it when it comes to the horrors Democrats have inflicted on America as they’ve politicized both the Constitutional rights of speech and assembly and the entire criminal code. Here’s John Hayward’s Twitter thread, turned (verbatim) in the prose I find easier to read:

...Which is why, as we have argued repeatedly at American Greatness, the government and U.S. Capitol Police should agree to release more than 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by security cameras on January 6. If the four-hour melee indeed compares to the worst terrorist attacks against Americans, and ranks among the worst days in U.S. history, the public deserves to see what happened, minute-by-minute, inside and outside the building.

But it’s not just Capitol complex security video that the government is trying to conceal from the public. In a recent filing, Joe Biden’s Justice Department argued against the release of footage recorded by officer Michael Fanone’s bodycam on January 6. The D.C. Metropolitan Police narcotics officer was one of the four cops who testified last week.

Fanone, 40, said he was not supposed to be on Capitol Hill that day but that he put on an official, unworn uniform—including a body camera—for the first time in 10 years to help assist his colleagues control the chaos. Fanone also testified he was afraid he would be killed that day—either shot with his own gun or torn limb from limb by Trump fanatics. In one outburst, Fanone called insurrection deniers in Congress “disgraceful” and claimed they were “betraying their oath of office.”

Fanone is working hard to become a household name. He’s been on a part-pity, part-publicity tour for the past seven months, detailing his harrowing experience and stalking Republican members of Congress. He’s become a regular on CNN; following his testimony last Tuesday, Fanone headed to the CNN studio for an interview with Don Lemon. The two ended the segment with an embrace and expressions of love for each other.

In a front-cover profile in this week’s Time magazine, Fanone recalled how he phoned the network from his emergency room hospital bed on January 6. “Fanone looked up CNN, called the number that came up on his phone and told the woman who answered that Mike Fanone with the metropolitan police department needed to talk right away to that jerk on the air who was insulting the good name of every police officer,” Molly Ball reported. “The following week, at his urging, the department set up a round of interviews with the Washington Post and major TV networks. Fanone, one of several officers authorized to speak to the press, was the star of every segment.”

Four months later, Ball writes, Fanone was in a D.C. ritzy wine bar with other cops looking “to meet girls”—Fanone is divorced and living with his mother—when they asked the bartender to turn on CNN. Lemon was airing exclusive footage from Fanone’s body-worn camera. “The bar fell silent as the body-cam footage played,” Fanone told Ball. “And suddenly, for the first time since that day, Fanone was sobbing uncontrollably, shoulders heaving as his buddies put their arms around him.”

The Justice Department continues to release cherry-picked video clips from its massive trove of digital evidence to support the White House’s narrative that January 6 was a deadly insurrection executed by domestic terrorists. The government continues to blow through discovery deadlines in court; during a hearing last Friday, a prosecutor admitted full discovery obligations in the Capitol breach probe won’t be fulfilled until early 2022 at the earliest....

Prosecutors in the cases against the January 6 demonstrators are starting to run into some judicial pushback: Questions about exculpatory evidence in their possession not turned over as the law demands, lower courts assessing the defendant as more dangerous than the evidence warranted, and most significantly, whether the prosecution is overcharging defendants with the federal crime of obstruction.

Most of the defendants are charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted area -- a fancy way of saying trespassing. Defendants are entitled to see before pleading to the charges any materially exculpatory evidence in the government’s possession. Defense counsel have complained that the government has not been meeting this obligation, and the prosecution has been responding that it is unable to quickly assess all the evidence it has to meet this burden. As to those charged with trespassing, some are claiming they were invited in and, therefore, could not be guilty of the charges. The prosecution got one extension and the question is whether they should get another, a question complicated by the defendants’ right to a speedy trial. Sixteen of the defendants facing the most serious charges will not have their cases heard until next January.

This week, the Department of Justice seems to have conceded the very point of the inapplicability of some trespass charges.

In its pleading, it states: ”we possess some information that the defense may view as supportive of arguments that law enforcement authorized defendants (including Defendant) to enter the restricted grounds'. e.g., images of officers hugging or fist-bumping rioters, posing for photos with rioters, and moving bike racks, we are not in a position to state whether we have identified all such information.”

To my knowledge, two appellant courts have now held that the trial courts have erred in assessing the appellant’s dangerousness. The first such case was decided in March.



This week, another appellant court came to a like decision.



The most serious hurdle to date was also raised this week when U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss questioned whether it was appropriate to imply obstruction charges against 235 defendants. The government’s claim is that the actions of these defendants constituted a violation of the federal “obstruction” statutes because their conduct disrupted the congressional certification of the presidential election. Judge Moss is no babe in the wood, he headed the department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and now chairs the Federal Judiciary’s Committee on Criminal Law. (In my view the federal crimes of “conspiracy” and “obstruction” are overly broad and misused by prosecutors. It is what was used to destroy the Arthur Anderson accounting firm and it was no compensation that the Supreme Court unanimously held that the firm’s conduct did not constitute “obstruction.” It had recommended destruction of records in the ordinary course of events, and if that made the government’s case more difficult it was not done for that purpose. Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States, 543 U.S. 1042 (2005).

In any event, Judge Moss questioned whether the charges aren’t unconstitutionally vague and asked the parties to brief how the Justice Department distinguished “felony conduct under the statute, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, from misdemeanor offenses, such as shouting to interrupt a congressional hearing.”

“‘Unless we can tell the public where that line is, there’s a problem.” You bet there is. Criminal statutes should be clear and consistent to provide guidance to all, and it’s hard to see how they can be when prosecutors have charged people who aren't accused of violence or destruction. Is sitting in the vice-president’s chair really obstruction of Congress. to take one example?

This hurdle will certainly slow down the impetus to plead guilty -- it’s one thing to face a misdemeanor charge and quite another to risk a 20-year sentence. If the prosecution believes this conduct had been seditious or an insurrection, they would have charged it. Obviously, they lack the evidence to sustain such serious claims. Will they now re-charge for lesser offenses? We’ll see. I think Judge Moss might have, as I do, recalled the recent Kavanaugh hearings and their disruption when he asked the government whether it could cite any other cases in which the government charged comparable conduct. The department could not.

...Not everyone on Trump’s side thinks this rally is a good idea. The Proud Boys are looking at it as a “false flag” event meant to entrap even more Trumpsters.

Messages from the Proud Boys Telegram channel show that the pro-Trump antifa-boppers aren’t interested in attending the rally.

“We aren’t going and you shouldn’t either because everybody going to jail. Sounds like bait,” stated one message.

“If you rally in DC right now, you’re an idiot and you’re going to get people thrown in jail or worse,” the group added.

it might be a good idea to stay away It looks for all the world like a false flag trap.

“This morning the United States Capitol Police arrested a California man who had multiple knives in his truck near the Democratic National Committee headquarters ... Around midnight, a Special Operation Division Officer was on patrol when he noticed a Dodge Dakota pickup truck, with a swastika and other white supremacist symbols painted on it, outside of the DNC headquarters. The truck did not have a license plate. Instead, a picture of an American flag was placed where the license plate should have been. The Capitol Police officer pulled over the truck ... officers noticed a bayonet and machete, which are illegal in Washington DC, inside the truck. The driver, 44-year-old Donald Craighead of Oceanside, California was arrested for Possession of Prohibited Weapons. Craighead said he was ‘on patrol’ and began talking about white supremacist ideology and other rhetoric pertaining to white supremacy ... it is not clear if he was planning to attend any upcoming demonstrations“
https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-officers-arrest-california-man-bayonet-machete

“If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty ... what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?“
-Thomas Jefferson

In a shock survey likely to draw even more attention to this weekend’s “Justice for J6” rally, nearly half of voters believe those charged in the Capitol riots are political prisoners.

According to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 49% said that those jailed for violence and other charges are being held as “political prisoners.” Some 30% “strongly” agree.

Just 42% disagree, said the survey.

Notably, 45% of Democrats agree that the more than 500 arrested are political prisoners.

Rasmussen also found more agree that the FBI’s Jan. 6 dragnet is targeting “patriots.”

Asked to agree or disagree with this statement: “The Department of Justice and the FBI have targeted, imprisoned, and persecuted non-violent American patriots,” 48% agreed, and 46% disagreed.

The findings are surprising considering the general negative media coverage of the pro-Trump riots that led to the U.S. Capitol Police killing of one protester, Ashli Babbitt, as she tried to enter the House floor.

The survey comes in advance of the weekend "Justice for J6" rally, when about 700 are expected to speak out in support of those arrested and targeted in the protest described as an “insurrection” and worse than 9/11 in the liberal media....

“What country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?“
-Thomas Jefferson

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin

“Trump acknowledged the widespread disgust that most Americans have for the professional political class in Washington, DC. ‘There’s a discontent with everything having to do with politics,’ Trump said about the general political situation in the country. ‘People are so disgusted with the way people are being treated from the Jan. 6 situation. It’s a combination of that compared to how Antifa and BLM were treated. When you compare the treatment, it is so unjust, it is so unfair. It’s disgraceful.’ Trump also characterized the planned Sept. 18 rally at the U.S. Capitol as a ‘setup’ meant to denigrate Republican voters regardless of what transpires. ‘Saturday, that’s a setup,’ Trump said, referring to the rally. ‘If people don’t show up they’ll say, Oh, it’s a lack of spirit. And if people do show up they’ll be harassed.’”
https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/1...p-senate-should-fire-disaster-mcconnell/


The traitor will be watching, closely studying the American spirit, or lack thereof. When far-left extremists were rampaging through our communities challenged by only very limited resistance, the traitor was inspired and knew he could safely escalate. When the People were forced out of work and imprisoned within their own homes without meaningful resistance, the traitor was again inspired. When Democracy was blatantly usurped and the People’s voice in government stripped from them, again without significant resistance, the traitor was once more inspired, and again knew he could safely escalate.

The traitor is a calculating coward, and he’ll be watching September 18th.

A former high-ranking Capitol Police official with knowledge of the department’s response to the Jan. 6 attack has sent congressional leaders a scathing letter accusing two of its senior leaders of mishandling intelligence and failing to respond properly during the riot.

The whistleblower, who requested anonymity for privacy reasons and left the force months after the attack, sent the 16-page letter late last month to the top members of both parties in the House and Senate. His missive makes scorching allegations against Sean Gallagher, the Capitol Police’s acting chief of uniformed operations, and Yogananda Pittman, its assistant chief of police for protective and intelligence operations — who also served as its former acting chief.

The whistleblower accuses Gallagher and Pittman of deliberately choosing not to help officers under attack on Jan. 6 and alleges that Pittman lied to Congress about an intelligence report Capitol Police received before that day’s riot. After a lengthy career in the department, the whistleblower was a senior official on duty on Jan. 6.

The whistleblower’s criticism went beyond Capitol Police leaders to Congress. Without naming specific lawmakers, his letter accuses congressional leaders of having “purposefully failed” to tell the truth about the department’s failures.

POLITICO obtained the letter detailing the allegations, which is circulating among Capitol Police officers, and is publishing portions of it here. To protect the whistleblower’s identity, POLITICO is not publishing the letter in full.

“The truth may be valued less than politics by many members of the congressional community to include those that have made decisions about the leadership of the USCP post January 6th, but I believe the truth still matters to real people and certainly the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police,” the whistleblower wrote.

A spokesperson for the Capitol Police sent a statement in response to the letter that begins: “A lot has changed since January 6. Although there is more work to do, many of the problems described in the letter have been addressed.”

The spokesperson added that the department “has implemented, and continues to implement, many of the critical recommendations called for in” a Senate inquiry into Jan. 6, a separate review conducted by retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, and multiple probes by its own inspector general...

The Justice Department is asking for the so-called QAnon Shaman, who wore a headdress and posed shirtless on the Senate floor during the siege of the US Capitol, to be sentenced to a prison term of more than four years, the longest incarceration prosecutors have asked for any guilty January 6 defendant so far, according to a new court filing.

Prosecutors' request for the high-profile Capitol riot defendant Jacob Chansley is as a harsh assessment of his crime and calls him "quite literally, their flagbearer" among the mob on January 6.

In their sentencing request to the judge filed late Tuesday night, prosecutors made clear they hope to use Chansley's sentence as an example to deter future attacks on the government.

The attempted coup, prosecutors wrote, "has made us all question the safety and security of the country in which we live."

"Those enormous harms, borne out of the acts of this defendant, must be deterred so that we never see a similar assault on our democracy again," they continued.

Chansley is set to be sentenced next Wednesday by Federal Judge Royce Lamberth of the DC District Court, as one of the first felony defendants to receive his punishment. He has been in jail for nearly 10 months....

Jacob Chansley, the horned, shirtless figure known as the QAnon Shaman who participated in the mob storming the Capitol on January 6, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his part in the riot.

If a 3.5-year sentence sounds harsh for what was ultimately a nonviolent charge—obstructing an official proceeding in Congress—consider that Chansley has already spent the past several months in jail in solitary confinement.

According to NPR:



Chansley felt he had no choice but to accept the plea deal that came with that 41-month sentence, of course, because he couldn't risk a trial that could send him to prison for 20 years. This is the sad reality of the criminal justice system: Defendants often plead guilty in order to avoid absurdly long mandatory sentences, and are thus denied the opportunity to actually attempt to prove their innocence before a jury of their peers.

The people who entered and defaced the Capitol on January 6 are not political prisoners, and they are certainly not heroes. They committed trespassing and broke other laws, and it's legitimate for the government to prosecute them. But this sentence is too harsh; Chansley did not commit a violent crime, and is certainly unlikely to re-offend. If prosecutors disagree, they should have to prove that to a jury: Unfortunately, the threat of an even lengthier sentence prompts most defendants to fall in line.

Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman" whose face became fodder for front-page news spreads when he broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 while wearing patriotic face-paint and a horned headdress, was sentenced to 41 months in prison yesterday.

The punishment, handed down by Judge Royce C. Lamberth in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was widely covered. But almost every news outlet skirted over the most insidious part of the proceedings.

"You were facing 20 years, Mr. Chansley," said the judge, telling him he was "smart" for not going to trial. "You did the right thing."

The "right" thing. At first glance, I'd posit most readers wouldn't think much of that; plea bargains are a core part of the U.S. criminal justice system. Yet in being frank with Chansley, Lamberth laid bare why those "bargains" are raw deals: Had Chansley insisted on his constitutional right to a trial by jury, he would have been staring down more than 16 additional years in prison. That's not because the government believes such a stratospheric sentence would serve public safety. It's because prosecutors routinely inflate hypothetical prison sentences and dangle them over defendants in order to bully them out of going to trial, where outcomes are both costly and uncertain.

In plainer terms, Chansley could have received almost 6 times a higher sentence solely for exercising his constitutional rights—something the judge here not only acknowledged but celebrated.

This is in no way unique to the January 6 defendants.

"The way the modern criminal justice system is structured, we punish people if they try to go to trial, which is sort of an astounding thing to say out loud," says Carissa Byrne Hessick, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina and the author of Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining Is a Bad Deal. "And yet it's entirely commonplace….Judges are quite explicit that they impose heavier sentences on people who go to trial."

Lamberth said the quiet part out loud yesterday. But judges are not where the plea-bargaining problem begins or ends. For years, tough-on-crime legislators have passed laws that allow prosecutors to hit defendants with multiple charges for the same offense, giving the government leverage to threaten the accused with grotesquely inflated punishments. The escape hatch: Agree to waive your constitutional right to a trial by a jury of your peers, and accept whatever the authorities will give you.

"State officials, prosecutors, judges are trying to keep cases from going to trial because it's expensive," says Hessick. If it were about public safety, would a plea have been offered in the first place? Take Chansley: Of course the federal government does not believe he needs to stay behind prison walls for two decades. If they thought so, they wouldn't have agreed to the deal.

The trials for the January 6 defendants have been highly politicized, and how you feel about Chansley's sentence may have something to do with your political priors. But the injustice inherent to plea bargaining is not partisan. Indeed, it infiltrates the entire U.S. criminal justice system and disproportionately impacts defendants without means.

Some would argue the practice is unconstitutional. Prosecutors in Maricopa County, Arizona, for instance, make no attempt to conceal the fact that defendants are pressured to take plea deals before seeing the evidence against them or getting a chance to attend a pretrial hearing. The accused receive a warning on those deals: "The offer is withdrawn" if a defendant wants to attend their hearing, and "any subsequent officer will be substantially harsher." The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to stop this practice.

Consider Michael Calhoun, a 61-year-old man who the Maricopa County Attorney's Office offered an excess of nine years in prison for selling about $20 worth of drugs. He has never been arrested for a violent offense, according to police records. Yet should he have the audacity to ask a jury to consider the charges against him, he will receive something "substantially harsher" than that near-decade "deal."

This is one reason why 97 percent of trials in the U.S. are resolved via guilty pleas. If prosecutors threaten someone with a decades-long sentence, and a defendant is worried about his likelihood of acquittal, it's no wonder that so many take such deals, opting to minimize risk. That obviously includes guilty people. But it includes innocent people too.

And even defendants we think are guilty are entitled to their Sixth Amendment rights. The Founders understood that rigid safeguards were necessary to ensure that the innocent weren't deprived of their liberty. So they made it difficult to convict people—something prosecutors clearly understand and would like to circumvent.

If people knew that a jurist can judge the law besides judging guilt or innocence a lot of people would be set free.

The QAnon Shaman is a dope for Q who got duped but he did not harm anyone. It was all a Q setup. The charge should have been dropped

The damn leftist communist agitators who rioted, committed arson, threw explosive devices at police, and blinded people with lasers are the ones who should be sent to prison.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - November 22, 2021

Independent Journalist to be Prosecuted for Coverage of January 6th Events

Steve Baker, well-known on various social media platforms as The Pragmatic Constitutionalist, is facing criminal charges for his non-violent, non-participatory coverage of the events in DC January 6th. Immediately following the events that day, Mr. Baker released several videos and long-form blogs to his tens-of-thousands of followers about what he witnessed. Nine and half months later he was contacted by the FBI with a request for a voluntary “interview.” Because of Baker’s long-established reputation as a political writer and journalist, the FBI had to receive special permission from the US Attorney General’s office to conduct the interview.

The transcripts show the FBI agents conducting that interview verbally “thanked” Baker for “not” participating in violence or property destruction that day, as is consistent with the thousands of hours of video they have reviewed. Baker only videoed events as they unfolded — from the rally at The Ellipse to the US Capitol steps, and eventually inside the Capitol Building. Baker’s videos have been used by such diverse media outlets as WUSA in DC, the New York Times, and Newsmax TV. His many stories written about the events of January 6th have been read by hundreds of thousands of people.

The FBI insists upon searching Mr. Baker's premises and electronic devices. The stated purpose is to obtain all raw video footage of January 6th, however, Mr. Baker is an active journalist investigating other questionable government activities, including certain agencies’ involvement leading up to and on the day of January 6th. The FBI will also obtain this information by default — information they're not entitled to or in any way related to this case. This is an egregious violation of Mr. Baker's right to privacy and may be a tactic designed to discourage and suppress Mr. Baker's First Amendment rights as a citizen and journalist.

Unaffiliated with any political party, Baker wore no Trump paraphernalia and carried no flags on January 6th. He participated in no acts of violence, engaged in no property damage, did no taunting of law enforcement officers, did not breach any police lines or barricades, did not engage in the activity of “parading” inside the Capitol Building, and did not enter the building until after the Capitol Police and Metro DC Police were ordered to “stand down” and allow the public’s entry. He’d informed his readers, in advance, of his intention to cover the rally in DC, then as the day and riotous events unfolded, he simply followed the historic event as it developed. As any good journalist would do.

To reach Steve Baker for an interview about this developing story, he can be contacted directly at:

919-272-5231
steve@thepragmaticconstitutionalist.com

To review his lengthy firsthand accounting and analysis of the events of January, please visit these links:

https://thepragmaticconstitutionalist.com/2021/01/what-i-saw-on-january-6th-in-washington-dc/

https://thepragmaticconstitutionalist.com/2021/02/who-was-up-the-chain-on-january-6th/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, January 13, 2022
Leader of Oath Keepers and 10 Other Individuals Indicted in Federal Court for Seditious Conspiracy and Other Offenses related to U.S. Capitol Breach
Eight Others Facing Charges in Two Related Cases

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment yesterday, which was unsealed today, charging 11 defendants with seditious conspiracy and other charges for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was in the process of ascertaining and counting the electoral votes related to the presidential election.

According to court documents, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, 56, of Granbury, Texas, who is the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers; and Edward Vallejo, 63, of Phoenix, Arizona, are being charged for the first time in connection with events leading up to and including Jan. 6. Rhodes was arrested this morning in Little Elm, Texas, and Vallejo was arrested this morning in Phoenix.

In addition to Rhodes and Vallejo, those named in the indictment include nine previously charged defendants: Thomas Caldwell, 67, of Berryville, Virginia; Joseph Hackett, 51, of Sarasota, Florida; Kenneth Harrelson, 41, of Titusville, Florida; Joshua James, 34, of Arab, Alabama; Kelly Meggs, 52, of Dunnellon, Florida; Roberto Minuta, 37, of Prosper, Texas ; David Moerschel, 44, of Punta Gorda, Florida; Brian Ulrich, 44, of Guyton, Georgia, and Jessica Watkins, 39, of Woodstock, Ohio. In addition to the earlier charges filed against them, they now face additional counts for seditious conspiracy and other offenses.

Eight other individuals affiliated with the Oath Keepers, all previously charged in the investigation, remain as defendants in two related cases. All defendants – except Rhodes and Vallejo – previously were charged in a superseding indictment. The superseding indictment has now effectively been split into three parts: the 11-defendant seditious conspiracy case, a seven-defendant original case, and a third case against one of the previously charged defendants.

In one of the related cases, the original superseding indictment, charges remain pending against James Beeks, 49, of Orlando, Florida; Donovan Crowl, 51, of Cable, Ohio; William Isaacs, 22, of Kissimmee, Florida; Connie Meggs, 60, of Dunnellon, Florida; Sandra Parker, 63, of Morrow, Ohio; Bernie Parker, 71, of Morrow, Ohio, and Laura Steele, 53, of Thomasville, North Carolina. The other case charges Jonathan Walden, 57, of Birmingham, Alabama.

The three indictments collectively charge all 19 defendants with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding. Eighteen of the 19 defendants – the exception is Walden – are charged with conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiring to prevent an officer of the United States from discharging a duty. Eleven of the 19 defendants are charged with seditious conspiracy. Some of the defendants are also facing other related charges.

As alleged in the indictments, the Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias. Though the Oath Keepers will accept anyone as members, they explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement, and first-responder personnel. Members and affiliates of the Oath Keepers were among the individuals and groups who forcibly entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The seditious conspiracy indictment alleges that, following the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election, Rhodes conspired with his co-defendants and others to oppose by force the execution of the laws governing the transfer of presidential power by Jan. 20, 2021. Beginning in late December 2020, via encrypted and private communications applications, Rhodes and various co-conspirators coordinated and planned to travel to Washington, D.C., on or around Jan. 6, 2021, the date of the certification of the electoral college vote, the indictment alleges. Rhodes and several co-conspirators made plans to bring weapons to the area to support the operation. The co-conspirators then traveled across the country to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area in early January 2021.

According to the seditious conspiracy indictment, the defendants conspired through a variety of manners and means, including: organizing into teams that were prepared and willing to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington, D.C.; recruiting members and affiliates to participate in the conspiracy; organizing trainings to teach and learn paramilitary combat tactics; bringing and contributing paramilitary gear, weapons, and supplies – including knives, batons, camouflaged combat uniforms, tactical vests with plates, helmets, eye protection, and radio equipment – to the Capitol grounds; breaching and attempting to take control of the Capitol grounds and building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent, hinder and delay the certification of the electoral college vote; using force against law enforcement officers while inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; continuing to plot, after Jan. 6, 2021, to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and using websites, social media, text messaging and encrypted messaging applications to communicate with co-conspirators and others.

On Jan. 6, 2021, a large crowd began to gather outside the Capitol perimeter as the Joint Session of Congress got under way at 1 p.m. Crowd members eventually forced their way through, up, and over U.S. Capitol Police barricades and advanced to the building’s exterior façade. Shortly after 2 p.m., crowd members forced entry into the Capitol by breaking windows, ramming open doors, and assaulting Capitol police and other law enforcement officers. At about this time, according to the indictment, Rhodes entered the restricted area of the Capitol grounds and directed his followers to meet him at the Capitol.

At approximately 2:30 p.m., as detailed in the indictment, Hackett, Harrelson, Meggs, Moerschel, and Watkins, and other Oath Keepers and affiliates – many wearing paramilitary clothing and patches with the Oath Keepers name, logo, and insignia – marched in a “stack” formation up the east steps of the Capitol, joined a mob, and made their way into the Capitol. Later, another group of Oath Keepers and associates, including James, Minuta, and Ulrich, formed a second “stack” and breached the Capitol grounds, marching from the west side to the east side of the Capitol building and up the east stairs and into the building.

While certain Oath Keepers members and affiliates breached the Capitol grounds and building, others remained stationed just outside of the city in quick reaction force (QRF) teams. According to the indictment, the QRF teams were prepared to rapidly transport firearms and other weapons into Washington, D.C., in support of operations aimed at using force to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power. The indictment alleges that the teams were coordinated, in part, by Caldwell and Vallejo.

The charge of seditious conspiracy carries a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

This case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. Valuable assistance was provided by U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the Northern District of Texas and the District of Arizona.

The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with valuable assistance provided by the FBI’s Dallas and Phoenix Field Offices. These charges are the result of significant cooperation between agents and staff across numerous FBI Field Offices, including those in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, among other locations.

In the one year since Jan. 6, more than 725 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including over 225 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.

An indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.