U.S. prosecutors leveled new accusations Friday towards the chief of the Oath Keepers and alleged members who’ve been charged with seditious conspiracy within the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, saying one co-conspirator got here to Washington with explosives and detailing allegations {that a} co-defendant saved a “dying checklist” with the identify of a Georgia election official.
Washington, D.C
Alleged Oath Keeper accused of bringing explosives to D.C. on Jan. 6
The allegations got here days earlier than the Jan. 6 Home committee is about to carry its subsequent listening to Tuesday, which is anticipated to discover connections between extremist teams accused of taking part in key roles within the violence on the Capitol and former president Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election by way of false claims of voter fraud.
In a 28-page submitting, prosecutors mentioned a legislation enforcement search on Jan. 19, 2021, of the house of charged co-defendant Thomas Caldwell, a retired Navy intelligence officer from Berryville, Va., recovered a doc that included the phrases “DEATH LIST” handwritten throughout the highest with the identify of a Georgia election official and a purported member of the family of the official. Each had been targets of baseless accusations that they had been concerned in voter fraud within the 2020 presidential election, prosecutors mentioned.
“That Caldwell made and saved a ‘dying checklist’ that features officers concerned within the presidential election course of — contemporaneous together with his preparation to journey to Washington, D.C. — illustrates his actions in the course of the alleged conspiracy and intent to oppose by power the switch of energy,” Assistant U.S. Lawyer Troy A. Edwards Jr. of Washington wrote, referring to the seditious conspiracy cost towards Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and eight others together with Caldwell.
On Friday night, Caldwell lawyer David Fischer forwarded an announcement from his shopper rejecting the allegation, which prosecutors first raised in arguing for Caldwell’s pretrial detention in February 2021. A decide has since granted Caldwell conditional launch.
“The DOJ’s declare that I meant to assassinate election employees is an absolute, 100% disgusting lie. Sadly, the DOJ has withheld from the general public the proof that exonerates me by hiding behind protecting orders,” the assertion mentioned.
Individually, Edwards mentioned the federal government has proof that members of the group from Florida and Arizona allegedly staged semiautomatic rifles and different weapons in a suburban Washington lodge whereas a 3rd workforce from North Carolina saved their firearms “able to go” in a car within the parking zone.
The prosecutor claimed that one other Rhodes co-defendant, purported Florida “state lead” Kelly Meggs, had advised a cooperating defendant who has pleaded responsible in a cooperation cope with the federal government that one other Florida member of the group, Jeremy Brown, got here to Washington with explosives in his leisure car, which he left parked in Faculty Park, Md. Brown, who has pleaded not responsible to the misdemeanor Jan. 6 counts, will not be charged within the seditious conspiracy indictment however was described by prosecutors as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
The federal government final September allegedly seized weapons from Brown, together with two unlawful short-barreled firearms from his residence in Tampa and navy grenades from “the identical RV that Brown used to journey to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6,” the prosecutor asserted.
Standby counsel for Brown — a retired Particular Forces soldier and onetime congressional candidate who’s defending himself however has been detained pending trial on separate federal weapons costs in Florida — didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The newest U.S. allegations had been contained in a court docket submitting required as a result of prosecutors search to introduce derogatory proof on the Oath Keepers scheduled Sept. 26 trial that’s not instantly associated to their charged offenses. Federal prison guidelines normally bar such extraneous materials however make an exception for related data that allegedly reveals motive, the intent of a wider charged conspiracy or is in any other case “intrinsic” to a case.
Prosecutors asserted that the defendants face costs together with conspiracy to corruptly impede Congress’s certification of the 2020 election outcomes and to oppose President Biden’s swearing-in by power. Charging papers allege that the group coordinated journey, tools and firearms and stashed weapons exterior Washington, prepared “to reply Rhodes’ name to take up arms at Rhodes’ course.”
“Caldwell’s travels to Washington, D.C., for Jan. 6, as evidenced by his statements, had been knowledgeable by a perception that the election was fraudulent and that the lawful switch of presidential energy should be thwarted by power. His writings focusing on election employees are instantly related up to now,” Edwards mentioned.
Edwards added: “Brown’s statements, firearms, and explosives are intrinsic to the co-conspirators’ charged offense as contemporaneous, direct proof of the way and means utilized by the co-conspirators to advance the objectives of the charged conspiracy.”
In plea papers, three Oath Keepers defendants who’ve pleaded responsible to seditious conspiracy costs admitted to allegations that they had been amongst a bunch that pressured entry by way of the Rotunda doorways after marching single file in a stack up the steps carrying camouflage vests, helmets, goggles and Oath Keepers insignia. They acknowledged some introduced rifles to Washington that had been stashed beforehand at a Ballston lodge and one in Vienna.
Rhodes, Caldwell and the remaining co-defendants have pleaded not responsible. Rhodes in an interview with The Washington Publish in March 2021 mentioned there was no plan to breach the Capitol. He has mentioned the group staged firearms in Northern Virginia in case it was wanted as a “fast response power” if Trump invoked the Riot Act and mobilized armed teams to maintain himself in workplace. Rhodes’s lawyer declined to remark Friday night time concerning the authorities’s newest allegations.
The assault on the Capitol got here after a rally exterior the White Home, at which Trump urged his supporters to march to Congress. The rioters injured scores of law enforcement officials and ransacked Capitol places of work, halting the proceedings as lawmakers had been evacuated from the Home ground.
Individually, an lawyer for Rhodes mentioned he contacted the Home Jan. 6 committee earlier Friday providing to testify earlier than it given that he be allowed to seem stay, in-person and unedited, not from jail the place he’s in pretrial custody.
Rhodes “will not be taken with any video games,” lawyer Lee Vibrant mentioned, and would discuss his group’s actions within the final election and on Jan. 6, waiving his Fifth modification rights towards self-incrimination. Vibrant mentioned the committee seems to be contemplating Rhodes’s circumstances acknowledged, as a sensible matter, that such an look would in all probability possible a court docket order from the decide, enter from prosecutors in his prison case and transport by the U.S. Marshals Service.