Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, told a jury on Monday he never ordered members to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and he thought it was “stupid” that some of them decided to enter the building, Reuters reports.
Said Rhodes: “I didn’t want them to get wrapped up in all the nonsense with the Trump supporters around the Capitol. I wanted to keep them out of that. Idle hands are a devil’s playground.”
Washington Post: “Rhodes’s statement of his intentions reinforced key elements of his defense: that there was no order, decision or agreement by him or four co-defendants to prevent by force the swearing-in of President Biden; that members were present in Washington as a “peacekeeping” force providing security to Republican VIPs; and that Rhodes’s goal was to get Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to overturn the presidential election.”
“But in his testimony, Rhodes also implicated other Oath Keepers defendants, and gave U.S. prosecutors wide opening to attack his credibility in cross-examination, which began late Monday morning.”
