ARGUMENT: OATH KEEPERS’ SENTENCINGStewart Rhodes Should Get No Leniency for Leading Anti-Government Paramilitary Group

On Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, is due to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other crimes related to his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.  The government has asked the judge to sentence Rhodes to 25 years.  Rhodes is asking for “time served”—the roughly 16 months he was detained before trial. 

Mary B. McCord and Jacob Glick write in Just Security that the delta between these requests is vast.

But even more striking is that Rhodes argues “perhaps one of the most important factors” supporting his request for leniency is his founding and leadership of the Oath Keepers – the very organization whose members, alongside Rhodes, have been convicted for conspiring to use force to prevent the counting of the Electoral College ballots on January 6.

As Rhodes tells it, “If the history and character of a man is to be judged by what he creates and how that organization functions within and for the benefit of society, then it is imperative that the Court give great deference to Mr. Rhodes for the 12 years of service and dedication of the Oath Keepers, as evinced through the organizations’ [sic] history of community involvement and volunteerism in times of natural disasters and civil unrest.”  The revisionist history that follows that statement is belied by the many lawless anti-government actions that have been the hallmark of the Oath Keepers over the last decade.

The Oath Keepers self-describe as “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders … who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’” while declaring that they “will not obey unconstitutional orders.”  Led by Rhodes, the paramilitary organization has frequently mobilized—heavily armed—against what they apparently have deemed “unconstitutional orders.”

This includes participating in the armed standoff against federal agents in Bunkerville, Nevada in 2014 to forcibly prevent the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from removing rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle from federal lands where they had been illegally grazing for decades. The standoff ended with federal agents backing down in the face of sniper rifles trained at their heads.

The record of the Oath Keepers also includes the armed defense of two gold miners in Oregon to whom BLM had issued notice that their mining was not an allowed use of the property.  The record includes the paramilitary group’s armed defense of miners in Montana after the Forest Service raised concerns about the miners’ claim and their unapproved construction on Forest Service land.  And it includes participating in the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 in opposition to the imprisonment of two ranchers convicted of arson for setting fire to federal lands.  That standoff resulted in the death of one of the leaders of the occupation, and the Oath Keepers threatening the federal government with civil war.

But you wouldn’t know about any of this armed opposition to federal authorities by reading Rhodes’s sentencing memorandum. 

McCord and Jacob Glick conclude:

In light of this history, it is no surprise that Rhodes led the Oath Keepers in pre-planning and attempting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol when their preferred candidate failed to win enough electoral votes.  He should get no credit for founding the very organization that has repeatedly taken up arms against the government and threatened law enforcement authorities.