Many of those at Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally a year ago were Trump tourists, rank-and-file cultists answering Dear Leader’s altar call. Others had more on their mind than speeches and the warm, fuzzy thrill of having Trump validate their grievance.
They brought gear and guns.
The Department of Justice on Thursday in Texas arrested Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers militia group, charging him with seditious conspiracy along with 10 other members previously charged for other crimes. Another eight Oath Keepers are defendents in two other cases.
The Department’s statement describes the indictment against Rhodes:
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.
All were prepared to take up arms on Rhodes’ direction, the indictment explains. The former Army paratrooper and Yale Law graduate denies any guilt, saying, “I don’t do illegal activities. I always stay on this side of the line. I know where the lines are, and it drives them crazy.”
The Washington Post adds:
In splitting up the largest charged case into smaller groups of defendants, prosecutors effectively drew a distinction between two alleged conspiracies: one by Oath Keepers associates who worked together and breached the Capitol that day with angry Trump supporters, as initially charged; and a second, allegedly led by Rhodes, to thwart the results of the election and the transfer of power, starting immediately after the 2020 presidential election.
Fox News political analyst Brit Hume argued Thursday morning via Twitter that Jan. 6 could not have been an insurrection because no one had been charged with seditious conspiracy. That tweet held up for about four hours, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted. Others on Fox, Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingraham, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and others have repeated that talking point for months:
And the thing is, the writing has been on the wall for some time that this day could come. Yet for months, those who have sought to downplay the Capitol riot decided to cite the lack of such criminal charges as some kind of proof that Jan. 6 wasn’t that bad. In the most dubious cases, they suggested the lack of certain indictments legitimized conspiracy theories that some people involved were actually federal agents who fomented the Capitol riot. (These theories, which have included ones about Rhodes himself, have routinely fallen apart.)
They did so even as a former top federal prosecutor who handled the cases suggested in March last year that sedition-related charges could indeed be on the way.
But it takes time to assemble a case for a crime like sedition. Conservatives were quick to dismiss the riot as the work of antifa and Black Lives Matter activissts only to abandon those talking points for others once they lost their news-cycle appeal.
Blake continues:
The question now is what those who have spearheaded downplaying a violent attempt to overturn an election will do about it. Will those who suggested that the lack of sedition charges proved the situation wasn’t serious acknowledge that, by the standard they set out, it appears potentially quite serious?
In all likelihood, not. They’ll note that these are merely charges — not proven crimes. They’ll note these particular charges don’t implicate Donald Trump or those around him. They’ll suggest this might be a response to the criticism Garland received from the left for not moving more quickly (ignoring how difficult and arduous it is to build such a case over many months). Some might even be tempted to pitch these people as further victims of overzealous political persecution, as Cain did with Meggs, and as Carlson did with Thomas Caldwell, who was the subject of multiple sympathetic segments on his show and is now among those charged with seditious conspiracy.
If all else fails, especially if the criminal process leads to convictions, the right may eventually deploy its “strategy of psychological innocence,” and abandon the seditionists as not “really” conservatives. Because as Rick Perlstein famously observed, in conservative cricles, “Conservatism never fails. It is only failed.” Because as Digby wrote during blogging’s prehistory:
There is no such thing as a bad conservative. “Conservative” is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives’ good graces. Until they aren’t. At which point they are liberals.
Ask Donald Trump how that works with his once-sycophants turned enemies. He’s a master. No doubt without ever having read Orwell.