The DOJ Anticlimax
If the U.S. Department of Justice cannot directly link Stewart Rhodes, founder of the “Oath Keepers,” to President Trump ahead of, or, at the least, on January 6, 2021, all charges against any defendant alleged to be part of that organization should be dismissed. Immediately. And, with prejudice, so as not to be eligible to be refiled.
“Seditious conspiracy.” A seditious conspiracy to inhibit the completion of the Electoral College and the pronouncement of Joe Biden as the victor of the 2021 presidential elections. For fifteen months, in written submission after legal document after press release after oral argument. The DOJ attorneys and its government machine employees have been proclaiming this was the over-arching theory of all criminal prosecutions against those at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. And most especially “the Oath Keepers.”
On May 4, 2022, the DOJ produced a pop-up defendant from North Carolina. A man named William Todd Wilson, who the DOJ shoved out onto the stage, signed plea deal in hand, including the charges of “seditious conspiracy” and “obstruction of Congress.” DOJ issued a press release. Media had a cut-and-paste frenzy for one day’s news cycle. And this man, who seems not to exist on the Internet, though 45 years old, was not so much as photographed, perhaps because the terms of Wilson’s plea deal include that he will be an on-going confidential informant for the feds.
In Wilson’s plea paperwork is the same ol’ blah-blah paragraphs the DOJ has been regurgitating for more than a year, trying to get everyone brainwashed on their theory of the prosecution.
But! Then, there was a little twist in the story. A slight curve in the road. Imperceptible, if you’ve never met a man, last name “Rhodes,” and you haven’t been reading every other piece of paper spewed out by the more than 9,500 attorneys plus their staff at DOJ since January 6.
“I just wanna fight.”
Wilson’s plea deal alleges that, somewhere shortly after 5:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021, Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, primary target of the DOJ “seditious conspiracy” charges, and basis for House Bill 350 to create the first federal crime of “domestic terrorism… That somewhere shortly after 5:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021, Rhodes hung up the telephone, while standing in a posh suite at a D.C. hotel, and said:
“I just wanna fight.”
The DOJ doesn’t tell us who Rhodes called at 5:00 p.m. Simply that it was someone who might have had a way to get in touch with President Trump.
The allegation is an admission by the DOJ, through the plea deal defendant of Wilson, that Rhodes did not have a standing relationship with President Trump that would have given Rhodes access to the super-secret bat phone of The Donald.
And Rhodes, in typical Rhodes fashion, hung up and pouted:
“I just wanna fight.”
But he didn’t. Fight.
For whatever else the allegations may suggest about persons who may have been affiliated with the Oath Keepers organization, the DOJ makes no allegations of a direct connection between President Trump and Stewart Rhodes. No plotting beforehand. No spontaneous fusion the day of. Just a guy, fighting mad, for whom a local bar room brawl wasn’t going to be enough. So he went to Washington, took others with him, stomped around, and left. (A little bit more detailed than that, but not much. It’s a fair summary.)
So where’s the crime of “seditious conspiracy?”
This past week, Americans protested outside the homes of select U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Where those Justices have no 24/7 security. Where they have spouses and children. Where they spend what little time off that they take from the daily pressures of serving on our nation’s highest court. There were no announcements of impending arrests of those protestors.
Two elements were different. One, no confusion among protestors that the homes of the SCOTUS Justices were their private property because, at least in part, their front doors remained closed. Second, no covert federal operatives infiltrating the protestors.
The day of January 6, there was well-documented confusion all over the place. Confusion as to which agency was on lead. Confusion as to what to do after USCP Chief Sund unilaterally called for a lock-down of the Capitol building in response to notification of discovery of pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC. Confusion among USCP officers as to how to conduct a building-wide lock-down. Confusion as to how to evacuate the Members of Congress, who had been permitted to continue to function for nearly an hour after the lock-down decision was made. Confusion as to primary responsibility by 18 USCP officers, assigned to guard the House Chamber, after one of them – Michael Byrd – shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, such that they all fled down a back stairway, leaving her, lying on the floor, bleeding out, while they did a headcount only of themselves.
Confusion because doors were open as people continued to arrive, having walked from a peaceful rally of thousands at the Ellipse, towards The People’s House. Confusion because there were plain clothed officers from multiple agencies disbursed throughout the building and grounds. Confusion because officers in uniforms did not arrest anyone during the seven-hour stretch, nor did they know how to use their own equipment, such as interlocking shields.
Confusion as Washington, D.C, Mayor Muriel Bowser delayed deployment of the National Guard by more than four hours, while she tied up high-ranking U.S. military officials to develop a plan, which, two days before, she had announced she would not need and did not want.
Confusion as the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader were nowhere to be seen, not even on television, to speak to the nation to request people leave the building and grounds so that order could be restored. Confusion in the mind of the President, who wondered, himself, why Pelosi and Schumer weren’t doing anything to calm the situation.
Some people did pick a fight that afternoon. Some civilians. Some informants. Some law enforcement officers. Some, because they were instigators. Some, because they were provoked. Some, in self-defense.
But not Rhodes.
He felt it. He apparently said it. But, he didn’t. Fight. Nor did he ask anyone else among his group to do so. Even when he offered to fight and was declined, Rhodes didn’t.
Instead, Rhodes gathered up the others who had joined him in Washington to that morning be at the Ellipse for President Trump’s rally, and they went out to dinner. In public. Ate a meal. Talked. And then (drum roll) they checked out of hotels and drove home (fizzle).
President Trump hadn’t given Stewart Rhodes any of his mobile numbers – a fact completely consistent with the fact that then primary candidate Trump knew about as much about the Second Amendment when he sought the NRA endorsement as would be expected of a real estate developer from NYC. President Trump had no pre-existing relationships with Second Amendment groups, the Oath Keepers, militias, or others on down the line. Nor did he develop working relationships with leaders of such organizations during his tenure in the White House.
The plea deal of Wilson, however, makes clear, that after sixteen months of what the DOJ wanted us to believe was nail-biting suspense, the whole thing is simply an anticlimax. The DOJ is as full of puffery as the Raphaelite clouds, drifting past, on an otherwise beautiful spring day, here on the coast.
It is time for the DOJ to withdraw the charges against Rhodes and about twenty-five other taxpayers with little to no criminal background to allow them to get back to work.
P.S.: The actual allegation in Wilson’s “Statement of Offense,” paragraph 44, as drafted by someone at the DOJ, is that Rhodes said, “I just want to fight,” which makes him sound like a Harvard man, but Rhodes is an Eli. I suspect the correct allegation would be “wanna.” “I just wanna fight.” Perhaps even with a Cohen Brothers style fist bawled up at his side, but with no punch thrown. The End.
