By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent will testify on Tuesday in the trial of the founder of the anti-government Oath Keepers group and four others accused of plotting to use force on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's election victory.
FBI Special Agent Byron Cody will resume testifying about evidence the government gathered for the case, including a series of inflammatory texts, speeches and online posts by Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.
In those messages, Rhodes spoke about the potential for a "bloody" war and told followers that they needed to take matters into their own hands if former President Donald Trump failed to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 19th century U.S. law that empowers presidents to deploy troops to quell civil unrest.
Rhodes and his four co-defendants - Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins - are accused of conspiring to try to keep Republican Trump in power after he had lost the 2020 election. A pro-Trump mob charged into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and attacked police, but failed to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory.
Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted crime under a statute dating to the Civil War era and is defined as attempting "to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States." It carries a possible prison sentence of 20 years.
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