Fewer than 2 dozen Oath Keepers attended Jan. 6 riot, FBI agent testifies

WASHINGTON — A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent testified Tuesday in the seditious conspiracy trial of members of the Oath Keepers militia that fewer than two dozen members of the far-right group were actually present in the nation’s capital when supporters of then-President Donald Trump engaged in a riot to try to block the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

FBI Special Agent Byron Cody initially told the jury Tuesday that approximately 24 to 30 Oath Keepers had traveled to Washington on Jan. 5 and 6, but over the course of his testimony he lowered that figure to between 15 and 20 members of the group.

Prosecutors in the case have often portrayed the Oath Keepers as an organization that counts thousands of members across the country, and whose leaders, particularly Stewart Rhodes, had discussed using violence to extend Trump’s tenure as president and block Biden from replacing him.

While cross-examining Cody, one defense lawyer said that in the weeks before the Jan. 6 riot and months afterward, Rhodes’s phone records showed he was plugged into more than 150 separate chat groups, and that the Oath Keepers believed their membership totaled as many as 40,000, a figure Cody did not dispute. Yet those figures stood in contrast to the comparatively much smaller number of members who traveled to Washington and participated in the riot.

In the weeks and months before the riot, Cody testified when cross-examined, Rhodes had likely been unemployed and had made a living off of Oath Keeper dues. Rhodes would travel around the country to various Oath Keepers events and had also purchased guns, Cody added.

In an open letter published Dec. 14, 2020, on the Oath Keepers website, Rhodes and Kelly SoRelle, an Oath Keepers lawyer and close Rhodes associate, told Trump that he “must use the insurrection act to stop the steal and defeat the coup,” adding that “millions of American military and law enforcement veterans” were standing by for Trump’s orders.

Five days later, in a private Oath Keepers leadership chat, Rhodes said he was “only guessing” about what was going on in Trump’s head but said that “part of him [Trump] now understands” that some kind of rebellion against Biden’s confirmation as president was needed. But Rhodes added that if Trump “doesn't do it, we will. ... We will not submit to an illegitimate Chicom [member of the Communist Party of China] puppet regime. That we will nullify, refuse to comply, defy, resist and defend. The same path the Founders walk.”

Justin Eller, an FBI counterterrorism agent based in Cincinnati, testified Tuesday that he was initially assigned to investigate the case of Jessica Watkins, a co-defendant of Rhodes and leader of the Oath Keepers in Ohio. In a Nov. 16, 2020, Facebook message posted under the pen name Jolly Roger, Watkins wrote that “Anything he [Biden] signs into law we won’t recognize as legitimate,” adding that America’s largest militia said it would refuse to recognize Biden as president and “resist” his administration, Eller testified.

In a Dec. 4 message to Donovan Crowl, an Oath Keepers leader who was arrested and faces trial with a separate Oath Keepers group in February, Thomas Caldwell, one of Rhodes’s current co-defendants, discussed how “North Carolina boys” were happy with a plan proposed by Crowl to send teams of three to four men to participate in a protest scheduled for Washington later that December. Caldwell advised Crowl that Doug Smith, a North Carolina Oath Keepers leader known as Ranger, was thinking it might be better for the group to plan for action on a scale that would be “much larger and involve supporting the President directly and taking our country back.”

“That would be our last chance to save the country and may be quite violent,” Crowl said. He added, however, that “Stewie” Rhodes “has never talked to me or sent me shit since the DC op. He might see me as a threat though I have no desire to replace him.” Crowl added, however, that "I will be ready for violence if it comes. You know me. ... I think if the militia is called out in December or January to stop the socialists for me anyway it would feel very right.”

“I have your back, sir,” Crowl wrote Caldwell.

Rhodes and his co-defendants face multiple federal criminal charges stemming from their participation in the riot at the Capitol, including seditious conspiracy, a rare and politically controversial charge carrying a penalty of up to 20 years in prison upon conviction.