The founder of the far-right organization Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, has admitted using violence to prevent the results of the 2020 US presidential election, a federal prosecutor denounced this Friday.
In closing arguments — after almost two months of trial against Rhodes and four other members of the radical movement, accused of leading a rebellion to prevent the presidential victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden — assistant attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said that there had been evidence that there was a plan for the “violent overthrow” of the US regime.
Our democracy is fragile. It cannot exist without the rule of law and it will not survive if people dissatisfied with the results of an election are allowed to use force and violence to change the result,” Rakoczy argued.
Closing arguments began in federal court in Washington, after all the evidence was presented in the trial, where the prosecutor sought to prove that this extremist group conspired to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden.
Rhodes’ defense attorney, James Lee Bright, tried to downplay the far-right movement’s violent rhetoric.insisting on the thesis that there was never a conspiracy, alleging that the defendants limited themselves to repeating Trump’s arguments that there had been “electoral fraud”.
The evidence presented by prosecutors sought to show that Rhodes and his co-defendants discussed resorting to violence to keep Biden out of the White House, in the weeks leading up to the Capitol invasion on January 6, 2021, and even hid weapons in a hotel on the outskirts of Washington, for an eventual “quick reaction” operation.
On January 6, members of the Oath Keepers, wearing helmets and other combat gear, were seen rallying the crowd that stormed the Capitol.
Rhodes stood outside the building that houses Congress, like “a general examining his troops on a battlefield,” one of the prosecutors said, in remarks to jurors.
According to the prosecutors’ version, after the attack, Rhodes and other members of the Oath Keepers celebrated the invasion with dinner at a local restaurant.
The prosecutors tried refute suggestions that Rhodes’ rhetoric was simply bragging, telling jurors that the messages sent were not just “delusional” but constituted “very serious” messages.
Rhodes’ attorney said his client was in a hotel room eating chicken wings and watching television when the first protesters began storming the Capitol, adding that the Oath Keepers members never used their “quick reaction force” arsenal. .
Closing arguments by defense attorneys are expected to continue on Monday.
The defendants in this trial are the first of hundreds of people who participated in the invasion of the Capitol and who will be tried for seditious conspiracy, an accusation that can carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
Source: Observadora
