The jury found Rhodes guilty of engaging in a seditious conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Kelly Meggs was found guilty of seditious conspiracy with Rhodes. The jury found three other members of the far-right group not guilty of joining the conspiracy.
Omission of an official proceeding, a felony that has led to some of the stiffest sentences in January 6 prosecutions, was one of the charges that all five were found guilty of.
It's a big decision. The obstruction charge could have been taken off the table. It was important to show that this was a violent attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. Randall Eliason, a George Washington University law professor and former top public corruption prosecutor in Washington, DC, said that the jury's verdict confirmed that.
He told Insider that there are people higher up than the Oath Keepers who could be involved in the conspiracy. The verdict gives the Justice Department some confidence.
The verdict was reached after three days of deliberations that were interrupted by the Thanksgiving holiday. During the weekslong trial, federal prosecutors presented evidence of the Oath Keepers planning ahead of the January 6 attack, and they showed jurors images of some members of the far-right group entering the Capitol.
The Oath Keepers discussed January 6 as a time for revolution, with one member saying the group would be in the lead of 1776.2
They said they wrapped themselves in the constitution. The prosecutor said that they trampled it instead. The Republic was fractured instead of being saved by them.
In the trial, prosecutors played an audio recording of a November conference call in which Rhodes said the Oath Keepers were in the exact same place as the founding fathers.
There will be a fight. "Let's just do it smart and let's try to get President Trump to do his duty and step up and do it."
The most dramatic moment of the trial was when jurors heard from Rhodes in person.
Testifying in his own defense, Rhodes denied that the far-right group was planning to break into the Capitol building. He told jurors that it was stupid for them to go inside the Capitol to certify the results of the election.
Federal prosecutors said at the trial that the Oath Keepers took advantage of the opportunity to enter the Capitol as the pro-Trump mob broke in. There was a cache of weapons the Oath Keepers kept at a hotel outside Washington, DC, prosecutors said.
Rhodes tried to downplay the far-right group's references to quick reaction forces in his testimony, just as he distanced himself from the Oath Keepers.
He said that it gets used too often.
The story is evolving.
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