Oath Keepers’ trial sees opening arguments

Jurors on Monday heard the prosecution and defense in the trials of five members of the Oath Keepers group who are accused of trying to stop the transfer of power from former President Donald Trump to current President Joe Biden. The defendants include Stewart Rhodes, the group’s founder. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said Rhodes began plotting to overturn Biden’s victory right after the election. In November 2020, Rhodes sent his followers a step-by-step plan for stopping the transfer of power based on a popular uprising that brought down Yugoslavia’s president two decades earlier, the prosecutor said. But the lawyer for the defendants said that the men had done nothing illegal. The defense also argued that prosecutors had cherry-picked evidence from messages and videos and that the “true picture” of evidence at the trial would show the men were waiting for orders from Trump that never came.

What, exactly, are they being charged with? The five Oath Keepers are being charged with seditious conspiracy, a Civil War-era charge that calls for up to 20 years behind bars. The last time the Justice Department scored a conviction on this charge was 30 years ago. The charge requires prosecutors to prove that the men plotted to overthrow the government, oppose it by force, or wage war against it.

Dig deeper: Read Carolina Lumetta and Esther Eaton’s report on the quest for safety and accountability after the January 6 riots.