U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta argued that President-elect Donald Trump would be putting democracy at risk if he pardons Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes for crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021.
"The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country," Mehta said Wednesday during the sentencing of one of Rhodes' former allies, according to Politico.
Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2023 for seditious conspiracy and other crimes. Prosecutors accused Rhodes and his accomplices of trying to "violently disrupt" the peaceful transfer of power after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
During sentencing, Mehta described Rhodes as "an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic, and to the very fabric of our democracy." The judge insisted Wednesday that the Oath Keepers founder still presents a threat.
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Mehta made the remarks about Rhodes while sentencing former North Carolina Oath Keeper William Todd Wilson to a year of home detention followed by three years of supervised release. Wilson admitted participating in seditious conspiracy but received leniency after cooperating with the government to convict Rhodes.
In the coming days, Mehta was expected to sentence other former Oath Keepers who cooperated with the government's prosecutions of Jan. 6 crimes.
