Editor’s note: Stewart Rhodes was sent to prison for 18 years after the Biden DOJ invented charges against him and his patriotic men’s group following the events on January 6, 2021. Stewart never went inside the US Capitol. He never participated in any violence. And, Stewart told his men to leave their weapons outside of the District of Columbia that day. For this Merrick Garland, Joe Biden, and the corrupt DC courts sent Stewart to prison for 18 years.
By Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers and persecuted J6 Political Prisoner
I’m a non-violent J-6 political prisoner, serving an unjust 18 year sentence after I refused to plead guilty to crimes I didn’t commit (Seditious Conspiracy being the worst of several absurd false-charges), and because I refused to bear false witness against President Trump, and insisted on going to trial along with my brave co-defendants.
On Jan 6, 2021, I didn’t even enter the Capitol, didn’t tell anyone else to (as the government’s own witnesses testified), and committed no violence. I simply stood outside and exercised my right to political free speech, but that didn’t save me from being railroaded through a DC show trial along with other innocent Oath Keepers.
Nor did my clean record at age 56, with zero prior arrests or criminal charges (just speeding tickets!), save me from being denied pre-trial release and held in solitary confinement for over a year (before, during, and after trial) including a stint in the “hole” in the notorious DC Jail. And I’m by no means alone in that.
Systemic denial of pre-trial release and extended solitary confinement was also inflicted on most of my co-defendants and many other J-6 political prisoners (most also had zero criminal history) to attempt to break their spirits and coerce them into false-confession “plea bargains” and, worse, to try to coerce them into agreeing to “testi-lie” (commit coached perjury) against other innocent people. Our own State Department condemns solitary confinement as a form of torture when other nations do it to our citizens abroad. It’s also a form of psychological warfare, used to break POWs. It didn’t work on me or my co-defendants but it did work on many others (imagine a veteran with PTSD, who’s claustrophobic, in solitary). And once word got out that we were being held in solitary, that caused others to cave and make “deals” shortly after arrest, out of fear of suffering the same fate.
I tell you this so you understand I’ve been there, done that. I saw this corrupt system of coercion, via soul-crushing punishment prior to trial, from the inside.
Which is why, although I’m one of the non-violent J-6 political prisoners, I feel compelled by honor and justice to speak out, adding my voice to the growing chorus of MAGA patriots supporting President Trump in pardoning ALL J-6ers, no matter what they were accused of, plead to, or were convicted of in a DC show trial, including those now labeled “violent” and “guilty of assaulting police.”
“A VERY NASTY SYSTEM”
The bedrock American principle of “innocent until proven guilty” became a sick joke for Trump supporters during the Biden regime. Turns out Nancy Pelosi had it right: In the Biden (in)justice system, you’re presumed guilty (and a terrorist!), tossed immediately into the “hole” in some dark, sunless corner of a detention facility and then given the “opportunity to prove [your] innocence” to a leftist jury drawn from the alleged “victim pool” of DC residents, in front of a DC judge who also considers himself/herself to be a J-6 “victim” (and that same judge won’t grant you venue change). Good luck! That, along with being threatened with decades in prison, is why so many gave up and took a plea “deal.”
As President Trump said in his recent Meet the Press interview, they plead guilty to assaulting police “[b]ecause they had no choice.” He added:
“I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system. They say to a guy, ‘you’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”
Exactly right. Pleading “guilty” out of desperation doesn’t mean actual guilt. In fact, in the Deep State/Biden “Empire of Lies” truth really is treason (hat tip to Ron Paul), and, therefore, lies are loyalty. You’ve seen it yourself for four years. Since the loyal minions of the regime lie constantly, your best policy is to invert whatever nonsense they’re spewing to begin to arrive at the truth. Well, that applies to the Department of [In]Justice/FBLie, their coached-perjury-committing witnesses, and DC judges too. Why wouldn’t it? It’s the same corrupt machine that indicted President Trump for multiple pretend offenses.
After my trial, I spent several months in pre-sentencing detention in Lewisburg, PA and in the DC Gulag CTF where I got to know many amazing MAGA patriots “convicted” of assaulting police on J-6 (by the way, their voices can be heard in the recording of J-6ers singing the National Anthem that President Trump played at his campaign rallies).
Most of the men I met were, as President Trump said, coerced into accepting a guilty plea “bargain” to avoid decades in prison. Others had a Soviet-style show trial in DC, where, of course, they were found “guilty” after being denied the right to even argue self-defense or defense of others (imagine if Daniel Penny had been precluded from making that argument in his trial). They weren’t allowed to show the jury video of police using excessive force just seconds before their own actions. The prosecution cut that out of the video, and the defense couldn’t even discuss it.
Very similar, by the way, to my trial, where we weren’t allowed to show the jury the infamous video of Ray Epps, on the night of Jan 5, telling a crowd “tomorrow, we need to go INTO the Capitol!” (actually doing what we were falsely accused of doing – planning to enter the Capitol on J-6 and urging others to join in). Nor were we allowed to show video of Epps whispering in Ryan Samsel’s ear seconds before Samsel pushed over the first Capitol police barrier on J-6. The judge wouldn’t even let us mention Ray Epps’ name to the jury. Like I said, been there, done that.
We all had our rights grievously violated in one form or another by a hyper-politicized, corrupt, weaponized DOJ/FBI/DHS, and DC judiciary because we loved our country enough to travel to DC, on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the criminal and unconstitutional theft of an election. That’s our REAL crime.
ALL need a Presidential Pardon and expungement of their record to make them whole by restoring their full rights of citizenship – the right to vote, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to NOT be falsely labeled a “felon” for the rest of their lives. And, if they’re a veteran like me, they need a pardon to restore their veteran’s benefits, including the right to be interned in a veterans cemetery. Yes, we’ve been stripped of that right too. I have a letter from the VA to prove it.
Leave no man left behind (as a felon).
THE WHOLE POINT: STOP TRUMP! AT ANY COST!
The entry of the Capitol on January 6th was a manipulated/orchestrated “wag the dog” “Reichstag Fire” style event meant to prevent meaningful Congressional challenge and debate on Jan 6 to the illegitimate electoral college slates from states that had plainly not followed state election laws.
It was also meant to divert attention from the actual ongoing insurrection/coup by the Deep State and Democratic elite that disenfranchised millions of Americans by stealing the election of 2020 through those unprecedented violations of state election laws, done in the name of Covid, to facilitate mass-ballot-box stuffing. Calling it pandemic “emergency” mass mail-in balloting (while violating statutory signature and date requirements), (unsecured) “drop box” voting, and “vote harvesting” didn’t change the fact that it was still just good ol’ fashioned party machine ballot-box stuffing, but now on a grand, national scale. And all done according to a well-coordinated, very well funded plan, as the plotters later openly admitted and bragged about in Time Magazine’s article “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election” by Molly Ball.
Violating state election laws meant to prevent cheating obviously makes it easier to cheat, and to cover it up. And that made it unconstitutional, since Article II mandates that only the state legislatures can determine the manner of selecting electors – not a bunch of partisan Democrat election officials or judges.
As Trump lawyer John Eastman argued, Congress (including VP Pence as the President of the Senate) should have rejected those slates from states where election laws were violated, sending them back to the state legislatures to do their damn job, by selecting the electors themselves, as they had both the power and duty to do under Article II. To his credit, President Trump, to this day, refuses to back down on that – because it’s still the truth.
And that’s why “they” made sure the Capitol had light security on J-6, refusing President Trump’s offer of 10,000 National Guard troops, and refusing to use the readily available, tall, black, heavy steel climb-resistant fencing that went up AFTER Jan 6. They wanted protesters to enter, so they made it easy, and then their provocateurs in the crowd made sure it happened, because entry (along with the mysterious, still-unsolved “pipe bombs” planted outside DNC HQ) allowed them to call an emergency recess and shut down challenges to the illegal/unconstitutional slates, and then rubber stamp them later that night.
Finally, entry into the Capitol facilitated their “insurrection” false-narrative (who ever heard of an unarmed insurrection?) and relentless “lawfare” against both President Trump and his J-6 supporters, all meant to prevent President Trump from ever regaining the White House by declaring him ineligible to serve under the 14th Amendment, putting him in prison, and/or convincing the public that he’s now unelectable (and to demonize, suppress, and eventually destroy the MAGA movement).
But none of that worked. In the long run, it only made President Trump and his movement stronger, more resolute, more respected, and more popular than ever, with the naked “lawfare” opening millions of eyes.
Then “they” tried to kill him. But, by the grace of God, that didn’t work either, and millions of people witnessed President Trump’s manly reaction to being shot in the ear (the reaction of a legit warrior), which made him unbeatable. God truly has taken what men meant for evil, and used it for good. Hallelujah!
Jan 6 was a manipulated event – a form of entrapment. As fellow J-6er John Strand put it, “Every case was prosecuted by the same government that facilitated and instigated the J6 event …. Nobody should be prosecuted by a government that facilitated and instigated a criminal event. J6 was obvious entrapment, with clear evidence of government fraud, dereliction, and police abuse.”
Spot on! Like my co-defendant Watkins described it during our trial, it was like a “lobster trap” – easy to get into, but once inside, you’re screwed.
Yes, the protest was real, and the justified anger and alarm over the stolen election was real, but “they” amplified and manipulated that anger by having agent-provocateurs, both in the crowd, and, sadly, among the police, agitate the crowd from both ends. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and murdered unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was just one example. He’s an open BLM supporter and leftist partisan. I believe other officers like him were tasked with using unlawful excessive force that day to agitate and provoke the crowd.
How else do you get a bunch of Trump supporters, who are normally very pro-police, to fight the police? You have select officers/teams of officers use excessive force against women, children, and elderly. According to witnesses, it was police shoving an elderly lady down a flight of concrete steps, repeatedly, that really set the crowd off, along with pepper balls and flash-bangs being used, unprovoked, on groups with women and children in them.
Police also fired rubber bullets and CS canisters directly into people’s faces at close range (which is deadly force), and shoved one protester off a railing 30 feet high, so he fell on concrete. When I saw that video, I thought he must have died, but miraculously, he survived. NO police died that day but four Trump supporters did (two were women). In addition to the murder of Ashli Babbitt, another unarmed woman, Roseanne Boyland, was beaten by police (struck repeatedly in the head with a billy club, while unconscious) and died. That too was deadly force. Police are trained to only strike below the shoulders, and to NOT strike the head with a club, unless the person is a deadly force threat (and an unconscious, unarmed woman is hardly any kind of threat). Men who attempted to protect Roseanne and save her life were later charged with “assaulting police officers” (and, of course, forbidden to show her beating).
Part II of No Man Left Behind: Why President Trump Should Pardon ALL J-6 Political Prisoners, Even the “Violent” Ones
By Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers
Continuing on
I know of one veteran who blocked a police officer’s billy club being swung at yet another unarmed woman’s head (again, deadly force – when you strike people in the head with clubs, they may die – and excessive force, since the woman was not a lethal threat to the officer). Does that combat veteran really deserve to be charged with felony assault on a police officer because he dared block the police officer’s attempt to club the woman in the head? What was he supposed to do, just let that happen? He only did what any man (worthy of being called a man) would have done. What would you have done?
Does that combat veteran deserve to be a “felon” second-class citizen for the rest of his life because he prevented grevious bodily injury or death being inflicted on that woman? Does he deserve to be stripped of his right to bear arms? Does our nation benefit from a trained veteran “sheepdog” being disarmed? The left would LOVE IT if all veterans were disarmed, but they’ll take what they can get, one veteran at a time. Let’s not help them.
And every time a police officer runs this veteran’s tags, or pulls him over and runs his info, the words “Federal Conviction for Felony Assault on a Police Officer” will flash on the computer screen in his patrol car, and that officer will likely approach with his hand on his gun, or worse.
Here are some of my other brother veterans who will now be disarmed “felons” unless they receive pardons and expungement:
U.S. Army Ranger combat veteran Robert Morss (aka “Lego-man”), who only kicked into high gear on J-6 after he watched a flash-bang grenade go off right in the faces of innocent women and children at the center of a group of pro-Trump, anti-communist, Chinese-Americans who were handing out “End the CCP” flyers. That’s what set Morss off. He was accused of organizing a “sheild wall” to push against the police (Rangers Lead the Way!). Before that day, he was a high school history teacher with a clean record, after serving multiple combat tours. A devout Christian of deep faith (he lead our bible study at Lewisburg), he is one of the finest patriots I’ve ever had the honor to know, and when it comes to love of country, despite all that’s been done to him, he’s STILL THERE!
U.S. Army Special Forces (“Green Beret”) combat veteran, and Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown, who was with us in DC working a volunteer security PSD, protecting speakers and guests for a permitted even on Capitol grounds. He saved a woman from being trampled on J-6. He also had the integrity, in October 2020, to tell two DHS agents to pound sand when they tried to recruit him to be a paid “confidential human source” to spy on Oath Keepers. He blew the whistle on them by posting an audio recording of the agents offerig to pay him handsomely, which embarrased DHS and the regime.
Which is why, when they raided his home after J-6, the first thing they did was turn off his home security cameras (just as they did at Mar-a-Lago) so they could plant fake evidence (two old grenades that had no DNA or prints from Jeremy) that the agents claimed to find, along with a short-barreled rifle, in Jeremy’s safe. Jeremy didn’t even enter the Capitol on J-6. So why were they even searching his home? It was revenge/retribution for him publicly embarrasing them by posting the audio of their attempt to recruit him as a paid snitch, of course. Like Schumer said, “they have six ways from Sunday” of getting back at you if you tick them off. They railroded Jeremy on false-federal weapons charges in a Florida Federal Court, but he was also charged in DC for J-6 (a direct parallel to what they did to President Trump – hitting him with multiple federal cases, in two jurisdictions). That’s what they do when you really tick them off. Jeremy Brown needs a full pardon for ALL of this “lawfare” against him.
Another persecuted warrior is U.S. Army Special Forces veteran Jeffrey McKellop, who served this country in Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks, and served this nation for over 30 years total. McKellop has been a serious thorn in the regime’s side, since, along with refusing to cooperate with the enemy by taking a plea deal (he considers himself a POW, and frankly, I concurr), he has been watching footage from J-6 and loudly, accurately, pointing out all the undercover agents/provocateurs/professional unconventional warfare contractors in the crowd, which he can spot because he’s a trained unconventional warfare soldier himself, and he knows a destabilization campaign/professional manipulation of a crowd when he see’s one. He’s seen it done by our own CIA and attendant spooks all over the world. And that’s why, despite him having zero criminal history, he too was held in extensive solitary confinement as punishment and as an attempt to coerce him. Didn’t work on him either. He credits his SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training with giving him “the strength to push forward and never given in.” In an open letter to General Flynn, he wrote:
“Please don’t forget your POWs here at home. We need you to help fellow patriots to take full charge of the DOJ and expedite executive pardons. Please don’t let us down. Ive been left on the objective to fend for myself, but I know and trust things are about to change.”
And, indeed, things have changed, tremendously! We won! By the grace of God, President Trump is about to start his second term (the third time he actually won). While we are certain he will at the very least release all of these men from prison, and we are all most grateful for that, the only way to truly end all the injustice, all the damage to their lives and their rights, is to grant them pardons and expunge their records so they are not felons going forward.
And that also goes for my Army Airborne brother Joe Biggs, a combat veteran who served in the 82nd Airborne, who’s a leader in the Proud Boys. And Marine Corps veteran Dominic Pizzola, also a Proud Boy. I was able to chat with them briefly a couple times during transit to DC Federal Court from the Alexandria Detention Facility where we were all in solitary (never in the same SHU, but still going through the same treatment of being locked up, alone, in a 6X9 concrete box). No surprise, their spirits were still strong and they were full of piss and vinegar, and we compared notes on our experiences as prisoners and shared some laughs (if you lose your sense of humor, you’re doomed). I’ve heard it said that some men get stronger under adversity, but really, I believe adversity reveals a man’s true character. That’s certainly true of President Trump, and it’s also true of the J-6ers.
And then there’s Texan Andrew Taake, who I got to know at Lewisburg. Though not a military veteran, Taake’s a natural warrior and leader of men (and a “beast mode” physical specimine) who LOVES to skydive, so he knows how to stay cool under pressure. The kind of man you want by your side in a tight spot. If he’d been around in Texas when the Alamo was going down, he’d have been there, on the wall.
And finally, “Bees,” another Proud Boy and also a physical specimine, and all around awesome guy. While not a veteran, he’s a well trained combatives practitioner who could take down/take out an active shooter or killing spree knife attacker in the blink of an eye. Again, the kind of man you want on your side in a fix.
Are these men perfect? No, and neither am I, and neither are you. Don’t expect your warriors to be choir boys. Most of them are hard-drinking, hard-fighting, and rough around the edges, but that’s always been the way of warriors, as Marine Corps legend General Chesty Puller knew, when he said, during an inspection, “now take me to the brig. I want to see the REAL Marines.”
We need men like them armed in our society so they can come to the defense of their communities and this nation when the REAL terrorists (the Islamist terrorists) come out of hiding and unleash October 7th style attacks nationwide in the U.S. It’s coming. In addition to home-grown radicalized American Muslims like the ISIS convert from Houston who murdered people in New Orleans, our foreign enemies (Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, etc) have had four years of wide open borders to infiltrate and pre-position as many terror cells as they want, with whatever weapons they want, into our nation. Read the novella “Day of Wrath” to get a sense of what that could be like.
Remember, there is no such thing as a “fair trial” or a “fair, and impartial jury” for any Trump supporter in DC. Doesn’t exist. So these veterans and patriots did NOT have their “day in court” in any meaningful way, in anything approaching due process. Any of us, any of YOU, who are accused of anything in such a “system” will be found guilty and turned into a felon, no matter what the truth was.
The only way to unwind this injustice is to pardon all of them and restore them to where they were before J-6.
Other men, while in the crowd outside the Capitol, felt something touch their head, so they reflexibly put their hand up to protect their head, and touched a large sign that was being passed, overhead, through the crowd. Turns out that sign was passed forward, far ahead, and was used to push against the police. So, because those men were spotted on video touching the sign as it passed over their heads, they were charged with assault on a police officer. And then given that same false-“choice” between accepting a plea deal where they would do a couple years in prison, or, go to trial in DC, where they were sure to be convicted by a Trump hating jury, and then be sentenced to over a decade or more.
I also met men who touched police shields or pieces of wood being passed overhead through the crowds. Again, they simply put their hands up over their heads when they felt something touch their head from behind (a very normal, instictive reaction). But just because they touched the item, which was then passed forward and used to assault police far in front of them, they were charged with assaulting police and even with assaulting police with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
And I met men who were charged with assaulting police with a deadly weapon because they sprayed pepper spray at the police (or just had it on them!). Pepper spray is, by definition, non-lethal (that’s the whole point of pepper-spray – to have a less-than-lethal alternative to using lethal force, such as a gun). That fact didn’t matter to the DC prosecutors, judges, or juries. They were happy to slap a “deadly weapon” label on the use of the same kind of pepper spray women carry in their purses every day (men carry it too. I often carried pepper spray while carrying a concealed handgun to give me a less-than-lethal method of stopping a non-lethal threat at a distance – much safer than using my hands while armed).
And while at Lewisburg, I got to know “D.J,” an awesome Christian patriot from California, who was convicted of assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon because he used a handheld electric “stun-gun” on a Capitol Police officer who was about to draw his service pistol and shoot protesters. A “stun-gun” isn’t any kind of “gun” at all. It doesn’t fire a projectile. It just zaps you on contact, with volts of electricity from a battery inside the handle. Yes, it hurts, and yes, it can incapacitate someone for a short time, but, like pepper spray, a “stun gun” is considered a non-lethal self-defense device. Again, it’s carried by both women and men for self defense in cities all over the nation. You can see them advertized online or find it in stores. It is NOT a deadly weapon. But that fact doesn’t matter to a DC judge.
Point being, what a J-6 prisoner is accused of often doesn’t match reality, and frankly, whatever the prosecutors say in charging documents, in court, or in interviews is almost always a bald-faced lie and/or a gross exageration.
All were denied a fair trial, so all should be pardoned and made whole.
Stewart Rhodes`
Stewart Rhodes is currently in prison in Maryland.
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