Much of his testimony appeared to lay the seeds for Mr. Rhodes to argue next week that the Oath Keepers did not go to Washington on Jan. 6 as part of a plan to storm the Capitol and disrupt the transfer of presidential power from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr., as the government has claimed.
Instead, Mr. Rhodes is likely to say that the group went to provide security for pro-Trump figures who were in Washington that day, including Alex Jones, the proprietor of the conspiracy-ridden outlet Infowars, and Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longtime adviser.
That is precisely what lawyers for some of Mr. Rhodes’s co-defendants said on Thursday, when they delivered their opening statements to the jury. (Two of them deferred their introductory remarks at the beginning of the trial.)
Speaking on behalf of Kelly Meggs, who ran the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, his lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., struck a similar note as Mr. Rhodes, saying that Mr. Meggs had been deeply affected by the violence that sometimes accompanied the racial justice protests after Mr. Floyd’s murder.
Fearing for the future and steeped in the “discord and vitriol” that had roiled the country, Mr. Meggs joined the Oath Keepers and started going with them to rallies in Washington because “he believed he could help,” Mr. Woodward said.
Mr. Woodward suggested that in the coming days he would call witnesses who would testify that the Oath Keepers’ mission on Jan. 6 was to serve as bodyguards for pro-Trump celebrities in Washington. He promised to introduce evidence showing that Mr. Stone had invited Mr. Meggs to protect him.
Bradford L. Geyer, a lawyer for another defendant, Kenneth Harrelson, said his client, a former soldier, was an apolitical person who had never voted in a presidential election. As recently as a year ago, Mr. Geyer said, Mr. Harrelson did not know that Congress had two chambers, the House and the Senate.
Source: NY Times
