Extremist Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes visits Capitol Hill after Trump clemency
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WASHINGTON — Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of orchestrating his far-right extremist group’s Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, showed up on Capitol Hill a day after he was released from prison as part of President Trump’s sweeping clemency order.
Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the most serious cases brought by the Justice Department, met with at least one lawmaker during his Wednesday visit and chatted with others. He defended his Jan. 6 actions and refused any responsibility in the violent siege that delayed the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election and left several Capitol Police officers dead and scores injured.
“I didn’t lead anything. So why should I feel responsible for that?” Rhodes said.
It was an extraordinary moment just days into the new Trump administration and after the president pardoned, commuted the prison sentences of or ordered the dismissal of charges for those convicted in nearly 1,600 riot cases, including for people convicted of assaulting police officers. Judges who sentenced hundreds of rioters criticized Trump’s move, which has freed scores from prison.
Rioters who were convicted and imprisoned for their roles in the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 were being released after receiving pardons and commutations from Trump.
Rhodes’ surprise visit came on the same day that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revived a special committee to investigate the riot, an effort to defend Trump’s actions that day and dispute the work of a bipartisan committee that investigated the insurrection.
Johnson said that he would not second-guess Trump’s decision to pardon the rioters and that “we believe in redemption, we believe in second chances.”
On Wednesday, Rhodes stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts inside the House office building in the Capitol complex before delivering a lengthy defense of himself and his actions.
Wearing a Trump 2020 hat, Rhodes said he was at the Capitol to advocate for the release of another defendant. Rhodes was among 14 Jan. 6 defendants whose sentences were commuted. He told reporters he would be pushing Trump to grant him a full pardon.
“I think all of us should be pardoned,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes said he hoped to eventually speak with the president, but had not done so yet.
“Right now, I like to come here as much as I can,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in the siege that halted the certification of Biden’s victory and left five police officers dead and some 140 injured. Rhodes was found guilty of orchestrating a weeks-long plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in the desperate bid to keep Trump in power.
Judges in Washington’s federal court spent Wednesday dismissing a slew of cases against Jan. 6 defendants that were still pending. Several judges took the opportunity in written orders to lament the abrupt end to the prosecutions, saying Trump’s mass pardons won’t change the truth about the mob’s attack on a bastion of American democracy.
Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes leave prison after Trump commuted their Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy sentences.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said evidence of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol is preserved through the “neutral lens” of riot videos, trial transcripts, jury verdicts and judicial opinions.
“Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies,” she wrote.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s election interference case before its dismissal, said the president’s pardons for hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters can’t change the “tragic truth” about the attack. Chutkan added that her order dismissing the case against an Illinois man who was charged with firing a gun into the air during the riot cannot “diminish the heroism of law enforcement officers” who defended the Capitol.
“It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan wrote. “And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
Chutkan and Kollar-Kotelly are among more than 20 judges to handle the hundreds of cases produced by the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history. Kollar-Kotelly issued her written remarks in an order dismissing the case against Dominic Box, a Georgia man who was among the first group of rioters to enter the Capitol.
In Congress, several Democratic lawmakers said they were stunned by Rhodes’ arrival at the Capitol complex many had fled that day.
“Does he still constitute a threat to public safety? Does he constitute a threat to American constitutional democracy?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House’s impeachment of Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate on inciting the insurrection.
California Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) said, “It’s new and interesting that they’re using the front door this time.”
At an emotional news conference in the Capitol, two of the police officers who fought the rioters said that they are angry and exhausted but that they would continue to speak out.
Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was crushed in the main center doors of the Capitol’s West Front as rioters grabbed his gas mask and tried to gouge his eyes, said he had been working 12-hour shifts to protect Trump and his supporters during the inauguration. “It doesn’t matter,” Hodges said. “I’ll be there.”
Box, who was featured in the HBO documentary “Four Hours at the Capitol,” was found guilty of charges including interfering with police during a civil disorder, a felony. He was scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 21. More than 130 other convicted rioters were awaiting sentencing when Trump issued pardons.
John Banuelos, 39, of Illinois, was awaiting trial in a Washington jail when Chutkan dismissed charges that he climbed scaffolding outside the Capitol, pulled what appeared to be a gun from his waistband and fired two shots into the air.
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor,” Chutkan wrote. “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
More than 1,000 of the people charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes pleaded guilty. Approximately 250 others were convicted by a judge or jury after trials. More than 1,100 were sentenced, with more than 700 receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from several days to 22 years.
About 140 police officers were injured during the riot. At least four officers who were at the Capitol later died by suicide. And Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the members of the mob. A medical examiner later determined he died of natural causes. Four people among the crowd also died.
Kollar-Kotelly said the heroism of officers who defended the Capitol “also cannot be altered or ignored.”
“Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building — our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world,” she wrote.
Kunzelman and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writers Farnoush Amiri, Matt Brown and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
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