WASHINGTON (CN) — After a federal jury heard hours of explanation from Stewart Rhodes about the distrust of big government that led him to start a paramilitary group, prosecutors in his seditious conspiracy trial began the process Monday of showing holes in that testimony.
Rhodes first took the stand Friday, describing disillusionment with the Bush administration following the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a “big impetus” for why he formed the Oath Keepers in 2009.
But U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy noted in cross-examination Monday that Bush had already left office when Rhodes formed the organization. The prosecutor also brought up the explanation Rhodes gave for celebrating the start of his new group with a launch party in Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2009.
Rhodes had he wanted to commemorate a moment during the Adams administration that he called “Patriot Day," in which militia members gathered to renew their oath to put constitutional rights over political party ideologies.
“But that wasn’t why you chose Lexington,” she said, noting that the location and date were meant instead to celebrate “the shot heard round the world" — considered the express catalyst for the American Revolution.
Rhodes went back and forth with the prosecutor, agreeing that both events were held that day but denying any connection until she brought up that he already acknowledged the tie to the “shot heard round the world” in a radio interview days before the event with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“Well, it’s both,” Rhodes finally conceded Monday.
Rakoczy then quizzed Rhodes about a “number of armed confrontations” involving the Oath Keepers in the 13 years since the group's founding.
She argued that Rhodes himself characterized the Oath Keepers as opposing government forces during a 2014 armed standoff in Nevada between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Cliven Bundy, a cattle rancher who refuses to pay grazing fees for his use of federal land.
Rhodes denied the lawyer's framing, telling the jury he sent members there to check that the government had a lawful search warrant to seize Bundy's cattle as well as to protect the Bundy family “from being Waco’d,” as he called it — a reference to the 51-day armed standoff between members of a religious cult and law enforcement in Waco, Texas, in 1993, that culminated in a fire and the deaths of at least 76 civilians.
When the prosecutor pointed out that, in the Bundy standoff, law enforcement did indeed have a lawful order to seize his cattle, Rhodes said that surprised him. He also said no one at the Oath Keepers knew Bundy and his family were plotting to seize their cattle back.
Rhodes confirmed when Rakoczy pressed him on whether he had supplied more than 100 AR-15 magazines for the mission in Nevada. He also acknowledged supplying night-vision goggles.
The interview again turned to Waco when the prosecutor quoted Rhodes as warning that “he and his people” would resist any attempt by the government to interfere with people's rights.
Only be “if they did it like in Waco,” Rhodes countered, stating incorrectly that children had burned to death in the 1993 massacre.
Rhodes agreed with the prosecutor when she noted that nobody in the Waco massacre had burned to death. Many of those who died, including children, succumbed to smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning. Several children were also among the members who were buried alive by rubble, suffocated or shot.
Rakoczy played an audio clip of Rhodes stating, after the Bundy standoff in Arizona, that the Oath Keepers would be prepared to meet government forces “rifle to rifle.” Rhodes said he did not recall the remark.
The prosecutor also brought up the presence of Oath Keepers in mining towns in the spring of 2015, insisting Rhodes “sent [his] men with rifles to those events.” Rhodes equivocated, saying she was correct, “in part.”
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