Far-Right Oath Keepers Founder Sentenced to 18 Years for Capitol Attack

(Updated throughout with details)

by Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON, May 25 (Reuters) – Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers movement, was sentenced by a U.S. federal judge on Thursday to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes related to the deadly assault on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.

This is the heaviest sentence in connection with the attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, then outgoing President of the United States.

More than 1,000 people have been charged following this assault intended to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral victory of Joe Biden, Democratic rival of Republican Donald Trump.

The prosecution demanded 25 years in prison against Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers in 2009, who presented himself during the trial as a “political prisoner”.

Kelly Meggs, co-defendant and former head of the Oath Keepers branch in Florida, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seditious conspiracy.

“For decades it has been clear that you want democracy in this country to turn violent,” Judge Amit Mehta told Stewart Rhodes. “I had never said this to anyone I condemned: you, sir, represent an ongoing threat and peril to our country (…)”.

Stewart Rhodes, a former soldier turned lawyer, was found guilty last November by a federal jury in Washington of the charges against him.

During the trial, Stewart Rhodes expressed no regrets, choosing instead to continue to accuse the far left of destroying the United States.

“This country is incredibly divided, and the trials (of those arrested for the assault on the Capitol) only make it worse. We are all political prisoners,” he said, vowing to continue from his prison cell to “uncover the criminality of this regime”.

(Report Sarah N. Lynch, with Doina Chiacu; French version Jean Terzian)