Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021, captured Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III on a closed-circuit security camera—video that Mr. Rhodes says was never provided to him or his defense team before his 2022 seditious-conspiracy trial in U.S. District Court.
Security video obtained by The Epoch Times shows that one of the exterior terrace-level cameras was trained on Mr. Rhodes while he stood on the Upper Northwest Terrace at the Capitol between 2:51 p.m. and nearly 3:00 p.m.
In the video, Mr. Rhodes appeared to be attempting cell phone calls but was not having success. It appeared that he was interviewed briefly by a podcaster, then continued trying to make calls, the video shows.
Standing with Mr. Rhodes during the video were former Oath Keepers general counsel Kellye SoRelle and an unidentified Oath Keeper in a camouflage jacket with an Oath Keepers cap turned backward.
At one point, Mr. Rhodes walked just out of camera view. The footage shows a hand reaching in to give the camera a nudge, which kept Mr. Rhodes in view. It appears someone was at the camera location during at least part of the nine minutes Mr. Rhodes stood on that portion of the terrace.
“I never saw it,” Mr. Rhodes told The Epoch Times in a June phone interview from jail, referring to the nine minutes of CCTV video. Mr. Rhodes said the idea that he was being surveilled is “really creepy.”
Mr. Rhodes said an undercover police officer was “eyeballing me at the November rallies around the Supreme Court.”
“He testified at our trial,” Mr Rhodes said. “They were trying to insinuate that we were casing the Capitol when we were there in November or December. It was just ridiculous. So their intelligence people were apparently aware of who I am because we were there prior.”
Mr. Rhodes and Ms. SoRelle appeared on the left side of the camera view at 2:51:36 p.m., the CCTV video shows.
The unidentified Oath Keeper followed Mr. Rhodes into the camera view shortly after. The man was likely providing security for Ms. SoRelle, one of Mr. Rhodes’s attorneys told The Epoch Times.
‘Pretty Clear to Me’
Mr. Rhodes appeared to be attempting calls or texts without success while Ms. SoRelle stood at the terrace balustrade looking at the crowd below. Mr. Rhodes moved left out of camera view for a short time, the video shows.“I don’t remember seeing this video,” one of Mr. Rhodes’ defense attorneys, Edward Tarpley, told The Epoch Times. “It may have been in discovery, but I certainly didn’t see it. We were given thousands of videos to review. It seems pretty clear to me that someone actually was following Stewart on the ground with the video camera.”
The video shows that at 2:56 p.m., a woman reached up and lit a smoke bomb for a man in camouflage clothing who stood on the top of the balustrade. Green and red smoke shot from the firework and wafted across the terrace.
At 2:57:30, a hand appeared on the left side of the video frame and forcibly tilted the camera down and then to the left. Mr. Rhodes was then back within the camera’s field of view. The other Oath Keeper was visible at times on the left edge of the frame.
The video is significant because it could back up testimony given by Mr. Rhodes in FBI interviews and in court testimony that he was attempting to get Oath Keepers away from the Capitol, not to attack it.
“I was trying to call them, to get them to come to us, to get them to come to me and Whip,” Mr. Rhodes told the FBI in May 2021, referring to Michael “Whip” Greene, his Jan. 6 operations director. “That’s all it was. I couldn’t get any [expletive] comms.”
Under the Supreme Court ruling in the precedent-setting 1963 case Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors are required to fully disclose any evidence that could be favorable to the defense, including impeachment evidence, material in the possession of police, and favorable evidence even if the defense has not requested it.
Mr. Tarpley said he considers the newly revealed security video to be exculpatory for Mr. Rhodes.
“It certainly backs up Stewart’s contention that he was trying to gather all the Oath Keepers who weren’t on mission to come to him at the Capitol,” Mr. Tarpley said, “for the purpose of keeping them out of harm’s way.
“The government argued that Stewart‘s messages to everyone to come to the Capitol was his call to action for them to come and attack the Capitol,” Mr. Tarpley said. “Of course, we know that is totally false.”
Defense attorney Brad Geyer, who represented Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson in the same trial as Mr. Rhodes, said one of the key issues in the trial was an alleged three-way phone call between Mr. Rhodes, Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs, and Mr. Greene.
No Orders to Attack
“The defense maintains that no communication occurred between Meggs and Rhodes,” Mr. Geyer said. “This video confirms that Rhodes was having operability issues with his phone and it also may suggest that Rhodes was being monitored on January 6 by law enforcement.”The video shows Mr. Rhodes having phone issues between 2:51 and 3:00 p.m. The teams of Oath Keepers who did enter the Capitol that day were inside the building just after 2:40 p.m., Mr. Geyer said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment but did not receive a reply by press time.
During the fourth day of testimony in the Oath Keepers trial that ran from Sept. 27 through Nov. 29, 2022, a U.S. Capitol Police agent testified that he took photographs at the Million MAGA March on Dec. 12, 2020, in Washington.
Special Agent Ryan McCamley testified on Oct. 7, 2022, that he took a photograph of Mr. Rhodes on Dec. 12 and forwarded it by email to other law enforcement officers. Mr. McCamley said he only became aware of Mr. Rhodes from an article he saw on the website of Defense One, a magazine that is part of Atlantic Media, publisher of The Atlantic.
Defense One published a summary of a long Oath Keepers profile from the November 2020 issue of The Atlantic. In that article, Mr. Rhodes was described as a “revolutionary in waiting” with “a talent for giving fringe ideas more mainstream appeal.”
The author wrote that he learned about the Oath Keepers in 2017 from a contact at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he said leaked an Oath Keepers membership list to him.
Mr. McCamley said he was monitoring the crowd as a plainclothes agent on Dec. 12, 2020. He said he saw Mr. Rhodes late in the day and took his picture.
Mr. McCamley was working as part of a joint task force with the FBI at the time, and had an office in the FBI building in Washington, he testified.
At issue are the sentences handed down by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta that were substantially lower than the prison time sought by federal prosecutors.
The other sentences being appealed by the DOJ include Mr. Meggs, 12 years in prison; Jessica Watkins, 8 1/2 years; Roberto Minuta, 4 1/2 years; Mr. Harrelson, 4 years; Joseph Hackett, 3 1/2 years; David Moerschel, 3 years; and Edward Vallejo, 3 years. Defendant Thomas Caldwell was found guilty of two Jan. 6 charges on Nov. 29, 2022, but has not been sentenced.
In those cases, prosecutors recommended prison terms of 10–21 years.
