Attorneys for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes are expected in court on Monday, seeking to get their client released pending his trial for seditious conspiracy related to the Jan 6th insurrection.
With prosecutors laying out the case that he should remain in jail after reportedly spending "over $22,000 on firearms and 'firearms-related equipment' in the week before Jan. 6," they maintain that he is both a flight risk and worry he will destroy additional evidence about his group's efforts to keep Donald Trump in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
In a motion filed last week, federal prosecutors maintained: "Rhodes spearheaded a conspiracy to oppose by force the execution of the laws governing the transfer of presidential power in the United States," adding, "Rhodes stood at the center of the seditious conspiracy—orchestrating plans to use force, recruiting and financing co-conspirators, purchasing weaponry and tactical gear, inciting support and action, and endeavoring to conceal his and other co-conspirators’ crimes.”
Countering that, Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote that Rhodes' attorneys are expected to make the case that, if Rhodes was a risk, the government wouldn't have waited a year to take him into custody.
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"The yearlong delay in arresting and charging Rhodes may be a point of contention at Monday’s court hearing on whether he should be detained pending trial," the Politico report states. "While prosecutors contend Rhodes is too dangerous to be released, Rhodes’ attorneys — Phillip Linder and James Lee Bright — are expected to argue that the authorities have undermined their argument by letting Rhodes remain free for a year despite the clear signs of his involvement in the events of last January and the fact that Rhodes' whereabouts since that time have been well known."
Additionally, the militia leader's attorney will also contend that their client did not participate in the actual riot and that his words exhorting his followers "were protected speech and that despite his alleged leadership of the conspiracy, he ultimately never gave an order to deploy the so-called armed quick reaction force stationed at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., to deploy to the Capitol."
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