“As this Court is well aware, the justice system’s reaction to January 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether January 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler wrote in the 183-page sentencing memo. “Left unchecked, this impulse threatens our democracy.”
Prosecutors cited polling from earlier this year showing that one in five Americans believe political violence is sometimes justified and that one in 10 “believes it would be justified if it meant the return of President Trump.”
Rhodes was charged with seditious conspiracy last year alongside nearly a dozen Oath Keepers for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors alleged that Rhodes embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and used it to mobilize Oath Keepers across the country to resist the results of the election.
“These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country, but against it,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “In their own words, they were ‘willing to die’ in a ‘guerilla war’ to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential Election. … These defendants played a central and damning role in opposing by force the government of the United States, breaking the solemn oath many of them swore as members of the United States Armed Forces.”
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