Oath Keeper lawyer pleads guilty to Capitol riot charges

WASHINGTON (CN) — A lawyer who worked with the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers to plan their part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, pleaded guilty to two criminal charges on Wednesday.

Kellye SoRelle of Granbury, Texas, pleaded guilty to a felony obstruction of justice charge for evidence tampering and to remaining on restricted grounds, avoiding two other charges related to obstruction of an official proceeding.

The 45-year-old faces up to 20 years in prison for the obstruction of justice charge. Her sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Inauguration Day.

She entered her plea before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee who also presided over the trial against Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes and his lieutenants. SoRelle admitted she helped Rhodes plan the group’s conspiracy to buy firearms and store them with other Oath Keepers stationed in hotels just outside the borders of Washington, where firearms are heavily regulated.

During the trial against Rhodes and his co-defendants, prosecutors revealed that the Oath Keepers created a “Quick Reaction Force” and stationed Oath Keepers at three separate locations in Maryland and Virginia, including a Comfort Inn, a Hilton Garden Inn and an RV park.

According to the Justice Department’s sentencing memorandum for Rhodes and his co-defendants, the Oath Keepers stationed at the Comfort Inn in Ballston, Virginia, searched for boats to transport the firearms across the Potomac and bring them to the Capitol via the National Mall.

The hotel was also where SoRelle and Rhodes — who were dating at the time — stayed on Jan. 5, 2021.

On Jan. 6, SoRelle traveled with Rhodes to the northern side of the Capitol, where she messaged the other Oath Keepers in a Signal group chat named the “OKFL Hangout” that they were “acting like the founding fathers” and directed them to await orders from Rhodes.

She did not enter the Capitol building but live-streamed on Facebook from outside the building, she admitted.

Then, on Jan. 8, SoRelle and Rhodes directed other members in the Signal chat to begin deleting their messages related to the conspiracy to destroy potentially incriminating evidence.

SoRelle partially pushed back as to whether she sent certain messages or Rhodes sent them from her phone while she was driving, saying she couldn’t remember exact details three and a half years later, and ultimately admitted to sending certain messages starting with “Per S.R.” to mean they came from Rhodes.

After SoRelle initially pleaded not guilty, her case was frozen after Mehta found her mentally incompetent to stand trial in June 2023, just a month before her trial was set to begin. Her competence was restored earlier this year after a two-and-a-half-month evaluation while in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody.

As part of her plea deal, the government dismissed two charges: obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June to narrow obstruction of an official proceeding — which had become a staple charge in the Justice Department’s Capitol riot prosecutions — to apply only to explicit examples of document destruction. Had SoRelle gone to trial, prosecutors likely would have dismissed the charges as well.

More than 1,488 people have been arrested in connection to Jan. 6, riot in the 43 months since. At least 562 defendants having been ordered to periods of incarceration.

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May 2023, the first American to be convicted and sentenced on the rare seditious conspiracy charge in nearly 30 years since the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center. Three other Jan. 6 defendants have received identical or higher sentences: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, 22 years; David Dempsey, 20 years; and Proud Boy Ethan Nordean, 18 years.

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