Stewart Rhodes Shot Himself: The right-wing Oath Keepers militia’s leader was found guilty of seditious plot for his part in the attack on the US Capitol last year.
Stewart Rhodes started a plan to stop Congress from confirming that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election over Republican Donald Trump.
Why Stewart Rhodes Shot Himself
During an eight-week trial, jurors heard that Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper who wears an eye patch because he accidentally shot himself in the face with his own gun, had rallied his fans to support Mr. Trump.
Prosecutors showed the jury encrypted messages, recordings, and surveillance videos in which Rhodes talked about the possibility of a “bloody” civil war and told group members that if Trump didn’t do something, they might have to “rise up in insurrection” to stop Biden.
Rhodes went to law school at Yale, but he is no longer a lawyer. On his way to Washington DC before the riot, he spent a lot of money on an AR-platform weapon, magazines, mounts, sights, and other equipment.
The court saw video of Oath Keepers putting weapons in a hotel in Virginia for a “quick response force,” but the weapons were never used.
There was also a record of Rhodes saying that he regretted not bringing guns to the riot in Washington DC and that he could have hung Nancy Pelosi from a lamppost.
On the day of the riot, January 6, Oath Keepers were seen in the crowd wearing combat gear, while Rhodes stayed outside like a “general surveying his troops on the battlefield,” according to a prosecutor.
Stewart’s sentence is the longest of all the people who went to court on January 6.
CBS says that the boss of the far-right group called himself a “political prisoner” in court before he was sentenced.
Judge Amit Mehta said when he told him his sentence, “You, sir, are an ongoing threat and danger to this country, the republic, and the very foundation of this democracy.”
The judge also said that Stewart was guilty of seditious conspiracy “not because of your beliefs, not because you supported the other guy, and not because Joe Biden is president right now,” but because of the facts of the case and what he did before, during, and after Jan. 6.