Estranged wife of Oath Keepers' leader Stewart Rhodes describes his paranoia and alleged abuse

Elmer Stewart Rhodes is begging for leniency in the sentence for his sedition charge. Meanwhile, the government released recordings of Rhodes' estranged wife, in which she describes years of paranoid behavior.

According to the recordings, which are part of the government's sentencing materials and were posted online by Lawfare's senior editor Roger Parloff, Tasha Adams gave details about the daily life she had with Rhodes.

At a time that the "Oath Keepers wasn't much more than a blog," Adams explained that Rhodes "was digging tunnels with a backhoe in the backyard of our rental house ... there’d be speakers set up on a trip-wire and spotlights."

“If he was really mad at you he would want to do what he called 'martial arts training,'" she described. "Which includes sticks and knives with dull blades or edge taped. Don’t know if you can see all the scarring on my arms."

She explained that most of the scars were from ten years ago.

"Or he’d keep me pinned down in a chair with sticks or these ‘clubbells,’ they were about 8 pounds each, like baseball bats," she recalled Rhodes' version of training. "And he would just hit the chair or the sofa next to my head over and over and over again."

"He would start drawing handguns, waving them around, finger on [the] trigger, round in the chamber [saying] you’re gonna make me kill myself [but] pointing his gun at all of us," she continued.

“He choked my daughter when she was 14," Adams continued. "She had bruises that went all the way down — you know, later the bruising went all the way down her side. He punched my son. He would do that awful upper arm-grab thing and dig his nails in and bruise their upper arms. Afterward he'd be like, 'Oh you know I'm never violent. I'd never hit the children. I'd never hit the kids.' And he'd repeat that over and over again. 'I'd never hit the kids. Maybe just that one time.' And then the next time he'd just say the same thing. And he’d just try to make you think you were crazy for thinking it had happened. Or he'd yell and scream and break things..."

She explained that when he choked her daughter, it was at a time when things were growing worse.

"By then, it was almost impossible for us to get out," Adams recalled. "We're in the middle of the woods. Outside of cell service. I think at that point, we'd spent five months with no running vehicle. He would have a vehicle because he would travel. ... When he would leave, there'd be no way to get out. I don't know how true it was but he would tell me he'd been making friends with everybody in the police department and emergency services. And then he would go on and on with these stories about how women get locked up for mental incompetence and lose their kids permanently. It happens all the time when they try to divorce lawyers. He would tell me these stories and I'd just be so afraid to try to get out. It just seems like there was no one to call or no safe person at all to call to get out."

"Until he choked my daughter and started that gun waving, I realized," Adams continued beginning to cry, "we were just going to die or we were going to die getting out. So, it seemed like an easier bet. You know? It seemed more safe at that point. You know? We were going to die anyway if we didn't get out."

She explained it took about two years of planning and it took her oldest children getting jobs so that there was the income necessary and they had contact with the outside world that Adams couldn't have.

At the point when Rhodes began speaking at events, he began to adore the crowds and the adoration he was getting.

"He couldn’t get enough of it," Adams said. "He just could not get enough of the crowd interaction ... Many times we didn’t go home until dawn from an event that started at 6 p.m."

She described Rhodes as a kind of "chameleon" who would "talk to people on the phone and pray with them, ‘God bless you,’ and he’d hang up the phone and just say, 'Jesus freaks.”

When asked if there is something the judge should know before sentencing Rhodes, Adams said that the best thing that could happen is that he be put in a place "where he can't harm anyone or manipulate more people."

"Stewart will never be someone who was radicalized, but he will radicalize others, and he will keep doing that," she said. "He is extremely dangerous, and I don't wish horrible things on him, but I do wish simple consequences on him that he can't harm others. He will not stop. There's no shame with him. There's no sense he'd done something wrong, there's only ever a sense that someone had wronged him, and he's got to fix it if he's out in the world and rename and regroup and start again. And do something like this again."

Prosecutors asked what she meant when she said he was never someone who would be radicalized but would radicalize others.

She said that he was a master manipulator and spotting "follower types and keeping them around him at all times."

Adams also said that she doesn't think Rhodes believed the election was stolen, but saw it as an opportunity for violence and chaos and a way to bring more people around him.

"He's not in this for the politics. He's in it for the mayhem and violence, and it was an opportunity, and wherever there's an opportunity for violence or mayhem or taking control, he will use it, and he will manipulate people around him in ways that are almost fascinating to witness. he will get people to do his bidding and then they'll wonder why they just do it what they did," she described.

She said he would read books on mind control and crowd control and how to get crowds to follow him with his speech patterns and hand gestures. He would offer people whatever they wanted to get them to follow him.

Hear some of the audio clips below or you can click here.