Federal Judge Dismisses Seditious Conspiracy Case Against Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes

A federal judge has reluctantly dismissed the seditious conspiracy case against the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group and several other key members, after the Justice Department backed away from the landmark prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta had sentenced Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison, calling him "an ongoing threat and peril to this country."

Juries convicted Rhodes and five other Oath Keepers of attempting to overthrow the government using force, contributing to the violence and the chaos as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol six years ago. But the Trump Justice Department moved to wipe away those convictions, and eventually to drop the case altogether.

The dismissal of the Oath Keepers case marks one of the final codas to efforts to hold people accountable for the violent siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by a mob of President Trump's supporters.

On his first day in office, the president pardoned nearly every defendant charged in connection with the Capitol riot, which Judge Mehta described as an assault on the peaceful transfer of power.

"Today's epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy—the peaceful transfer of presidential power—to buckle," the judge wrote in an Aug. 4 order.

In a social media post, James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, congratulated the defendants.

"Seditious Conspiracy should never have been charged," wrote Bright, who called the charge a "thought crime."

Trump has continued to champion the people who rioted at the Capitol and has said they should receive taxpayer compensation. His plan for a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" met with bipartisan resistance in Congress. The president said that fund seemed dead, but critics say the administration could find other ways to pay the rioters.

The Oath Keepers case unraveled this week, just as three former federal prosecutors who handled the riot cases appeared on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning.

Those lawyers urged the U.S. Senate not to advance Trump's judicial nominees who deny the violence that took place on Jan. 6 and refuse to answer who won the 2020 presidential election.

The White House defended its judicial nominees, saying anyone the president nominated was qualified and went through the White House's "rigorous vetting process."

"Wherever there are judicial vacancies, President Trump will select highly qualified nominees with great respect for our Constitution and rule of law to be confirmed expeditiously," Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said.

But former prosecutor Michael Romano said views about Jan. 6 should not be a political issue. "It is not something that members of either party should have trouble with," he said during a press conference organized by Senate Democrats on Wednesday. "It has only become an issue because Donald Trump insists people lie or not tell the truth about what happened that day."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, criticized judicial nominees for waffling and dodging questions about whether Trump lost the election in 2020.

"If a judicial nominee cannot answer that basic question, refuses to speak the truth to power now, there is no guarantee that they will be independent on the bench and provide real justice to the American people," Blumenthal said.

The Republican-led Senate has confirmed nearly all of the president's picks for lifetime-tenured federal judgeships.

Former prosecutor Brendan Ballou said it was "scary" to think about those jurists hearing future election disputes.