Hey Republicans, you can crack open the entire story of January 6, 2021 (“1/6”) with one simple, relentless question: what is the FBI and Army Counterintelligence’s relationship with Stewart Rhodes?
Yale Law School ‘04 graduate Elmer “Stewart” Rhodes, III.
Stewart Rhodes is the founder, boss and kingpin of the Oath Keepers.
The Oath Keepers, we are told, are America’s largest militia, the most prominent antigovernment group in the United States, and the preeminent right-wing domestic extremist insider threat to the entire U.S. military.
Whatever the truth of these hyperbolic claims, the fact remains: the Oath Keepers are the most extensively prosecuted paramilitary group alleged to be involved in 1/6. Indeed, it was the alleged “pre-planned assault” on the Capitol by Stewart Rhodes’s alleged Oath Keepers lieutenants that was used as the key talking point to try to convert the day’s events from a protest into an “insurrection.”
But Stewart Rhodes is not simply a key figure in the Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes is the Oath Keepers, according to Oath Keepers board member Richard Mack.
Elmer Stewart Rhodes III — a one-time Army paratrooper, disbarred Yale lawyer, constitutionalist, gun enthusiast, and far-right media star — founded the group called the Oath Keepers in 2009. Since then, he has ridden crosscurrents of American anger and strife that ran from scrubby Western deserts to angry urban protests right into the Capitol rotunda.
Mack said he and others also raised concerns about the Oath Keepers’ participation in violent protests…
He said it had become clear that the board had no real power. “[Stewart Rhodes] is the Oath Keepers. It’s hard to separate the two,” Mack said. “It’s his organization, and he can do what he wants to do.”
Other dissenting voices found that they were no longer welcome. Jim Arroyo, the vice president of the Arizona chapter, said relations began to fray over Rhodes’ insistence on total control... [Buzzfeed]
A mere indictment of Stewart Rhodes, today, for the same conspiracy charges alleged against his underlings, would collapse the entire “threat” of the Oath Keepers that the country has heard so much about:
Rhodes is the central figure of the organization. He is the founder, leader and center of gravity for the group. In theory, then, an indictment against Rhodes could lead to the group’s collapse. [NPR]
The Justice Department argues that Stewart Rhodes both substantially organized and activated an imputed plan to use violence, on 1/6, in real-time, through a series of encrypted Signal messages beginning at 1:38 p.m., as Trump concluded his rally speech on the National Mall, and 62 minutes before Oath Keepers lieutenants allegedly formed a “military stack” to rush the Capitol doors. [Filing, pp.10-12]
These facts alone, as alleged, are more than legally sufficient to secure an indictment of Stewart Rhodes. We will walk you through the mountains of direct and circumstantial evidence built on top of these allegations, but readers must understand this: the only reason Stewart Rhodes is not in jail *right now* is because of a deliberate decision by the Justice Department to protect him.
Indeed, it is unclear whether the FBI has even sought to search Stewart Rhodes’s residence, personal belongings, or electronic devices, other than a single iPhone allegedly seized on the streets from agents in unmarked FBI vehicles in late April (since returned). For reasons discussed below, there is good reason to suspect the FBI will pursue a tightly controlled and very limited scope of investigation into Stewart Rhodes,. Beyond that narrow scope, they may not want the information they are likely to find.
Why doesn’t anyone at the FBI or DOJ want him?
If 1/6 was an “insurrection,” why protect the one man who, more than any other individual referenced in the charging documents of the 530+ open criminal cases, comes closest to the media’s ravenous description of a “lead insurrectionist?”
Is it possible that the Oath Keepers, the most prominent antigovernment group in the United States, has been run, in effect, by the United States government itself — and nobody has mentioned it until now?
Revolver News generated tremendous discussion and controversy with our previous piece exploring the possibility that some of the unindicted individuals referred to in the 1/6 charging documents may be undercover agents or informants.
With this piece, we intend to focus this discussion on a single individual, Person One; i.e., Stewart Rhodes — the leader of the Oath Keepers.
If it turns out that Stewart Rhodes has had a relationship with the federal government, the implications would be nothing short of staggering.
For Stewart Rhodes is not just a senior member of the Oath Keepers, he is the Oath Keepers. Given the fact that the Oath Keepers are the major paramilitary organization imputed (by government and media alike) to be responsible for the most serious and egregious elements of the so-called 1/6 insurrection, it follows that it would not only be fair, but necessary to conclude that in an essential respect the 1/6 event was planned and orchestrated by elements of the government itself.
In other words, 1/6 was not the result of an intelligence failure as FBI Director Christopher Wray, the US Senate, and the media tells us. Rather, 1/6 was the result of an intelligence set-up.
The following questions should be shouted from every megaphone, every street corner, and every Congressional lectern until the American people get full and complete answers:
- Does the FBI now, or has it ever, maintained a formal or informal relationship or point of contact with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
- Do any other Federal counterintelligence equities, whether in military, intelligence or law enforcement, including but not limited to Army Counterintelligence, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), or otherwise, maintain or have they ever maintained a formal or informal relationship with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
- If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, how do the FBI and other responsible agencies reconcile the enormous gravity of this omission from their previous deflections, non-answers, and boilerplate that they had “no actionable intelligence” before 1/6?
- If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, does this explain the FBI and Justice Department’s failure to pursue criminal actions against Stewart Rhodes in similarly high-profile “right-wing conspiracy plots” in which Rhodes appears to have played a similarly driving role?
- More specifically, did the FBI or any other U.S. counterintelligence equities maintain a discrete or confidential relationship with Stewart Rhodes during the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff? Was this fact dispositive in the Justice Department’s decision to charge 19 defendants — including certain of Stewart Rhodes’s alleged Oath Keepers underlings — for conspiracy to obstruct a legal proceeding, and to spare Rhodes of similar charges?
- Has the FBI even procured a search warrant for Stewart Rhodes’s personal residence and home electronics? If so, on what dates and what specific categories of evidence were sought?
- If Stewart Rhodes is subsequently arrested after the date of this report (given the pressure these revelations are likely to generate), how does the Justice Department explain its failure to indict Stewart Rhodes on conspiracy charges for nearly six months, when its declared purpose for seeking bail denial for simple trespassers was the DOJ’s stated need to prevent “the immediate danger to the community” defendants allegedly posed? Given that multiple Oath Keepers were charged before the January 20th inauguration citing the need to stop their “immediate danger,” why did the DOJ not file immediate charges against Rhodes, and then make a superseding indictment later in time, as is their routine practice in 1/6 cases?
Stewart Rhodes and the “Shock and Awe” Standard
Before we turn to Stewart Rhodes’ statements and behavior leading up to and during 1/6, it is important to keep in mind the so-called “shock and awe” standard of prosecution applied to those actually indicted for 1/6 related crimes.
Here is a partial transcript of Shwerin’s interview above:
Sherwin: I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure, that there was shock and awe. That we could charge as many people as possible before [January] 20th. And it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C., because they were like, ‘If we go there, we’re going to get charged.’
We wanted to take out those individuals who were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did…
Narrator: Sherwin told us that the most serious cases so far focus on about two dozen members of far right militias.
In this article we focus our scrutiny and our suspicion on one individual, Person One, otherwise known as Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the paramilitary Oath Keepers group. In keeping with the structure of our previous report, we will examine the as-of-yet unindicted Mr. Rhodes’ actions and statements in light of the Shock and Awe standard of prosecution described above.
But we emphasize a caveat from our previous report:
It is essential here to make an important note of clarification. The purpose of this analysis here is not to aid in the prosecution of any of these unindicted co-conspirators. Rather, our aim is to point out that, given the standards of indictment applied to those actually indicted, it is very strange and indeed suspicious that certain unindicted co-conspirators have managed to avoid indictment. This does not necessarily mean that we approve of the standard of indictment itself. Quite the contrary, the aggressive standard of indictment and prosecution, through an unimaginably broad application of “conspiracy” charges, is immoral, unjust, and absurd.
The same applies to this piece, and to Mr. Rhodes himself. Revolver harbors no ill-will toward Mr. Rhodes and we are not interested in calling for his indictment. Our interest in Mr. Rhodes is limited solely to our interest in the question of Federal foreknowledge of and possible involvement in the events of 1/6.
Finally, to get a more concrete sense of what the Shock and Awe prosecutorial standard looks like in practice, we once more offer the case of George Tanios. Though in truth we could just as easily have picked one of the several hundreds of political prisoners being detained and subjected to third-world level abuse in prison.
Readers may recall from an earlier Revolver report that George Tanios and his companion Julian Khater have been charged with nine criminal counts for actions taken on 1/6 just outside the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.
The most serious charge was assault on an officer with a dangerous weapon, arising from Khater’s alleged use of Tanios’s chemical spray to tag Officer Sicknick and two other officers in the face.
There, Tanios: (1) did not go in the Capitol; (2) did not use any bear spray himself; (3) had bear spray in his backpack and when his buddy Khater reached in to take it out, Tanios actively tried to stop him; and (4) in the end, it turns out, as prosecutors now acknowledge, his buddy never even used the bear spray.
And still, the DOJ has slapped this 39-year-old sandwich shop owner, George Tanios, with 60 years worth of stacking “conspiracy” charges because he said, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet.”
As we proceed to consider the case of still unindicted Stewart Rhodes, keep in mind this George Tanios “Shock and Awe” standard of prosecution.
Stewart Rhodes’s Alleged Overt Acts
We will now chronicle Stewart Rhodes’s path from Election Day to so-called “Insurrection Day,” as alleged by the Justice Department.
The first cited event comes from a November 9th video conference on the platform GoToMeeting. According to the Oath Keepers indictment, Rhodes (Person One) said the following to his Oath Keeper followers in the meeting:
We’re going to defend the president, the duly elected president, and we call on him to do what needs to be done to save our country. Because if you don’t guys, you’re going to be in a bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody – you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.
The DOJ alleges that Rhodes (Person One) “called upon his followers to go to Washington D.C,” in order to let the President know “the people are behind him” and to prepare for, among other things, fights against Antifa:
PERSON ONE told his followers they needed to be prepared to fight Antifa, which he characterized as a group of individuals with whom “if the fight comes, let the fight come. Let Antifa – if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them. I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that. Let the fight start there. That will give President Trump what he needs, frankly. If things go kinetic, good. If they throw bombs at us and shoot us, great, because that brings the president his reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.
Talk of the “Insurrection Act” is commonplace in Rhodes’ communications with his Oath Keepers followers. What he seemed to convey is that the Oath Keepers should be primed for an insurrection and to stand-by armed, just in case Trump offered some (undefined) signal. This of course is an effective technique (common to agents provocateurs and other informants) to keep followers psychologically primed for violent action without making any explicit and direct command to do so.
PERSON ONE continued, “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside, and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed, if they have to . . . . So our posture’s gonna be that we’re posted outside of DC, um, awaiting the President’s orders. . . . We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia.” [DOJ Indictment]
One week after Election Day, in a November 10 public post on OathKeepers.org, Rhodes told his followers to ignore “D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws” should they perceive a signal that President Trump has called them up as a militia:
Our men will be standing by, awaiting the President’s orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws (by federal statute, all Americans from age 17-45 are subject to being called up as the militia by the President, and all military veterans are subject to being called up until age 65 because of our training and experience). – Stay tuned for further details. [OathKeepers]
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