WASHINGTON—A member of the Oath Keepers unexpectedly took the stand in the seditious-conspiracy trial to testify in her own defense on Nov. 16, and apologized for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“It was really stupid. I got swept up ... I realize it was wrong,” said Jessica Watkins, an Oath Keeper from Hilliard, Ohio.
She described walking on the Capitol steps as a unique moment when there was no violence, everybody was in a good mood, and the crowd was chanting “Oath Keepers.”
Watkins told the court it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to enter the Capitol, comparing it to a Black Friday crowd with lots of people milling about.
“Do you realize how it sounds now when you say there wasn’t any violence?” the defense counsel asked.
“Yes,” Watkins responded. “I thought it was a heroic moment at the time. We the people, we went into our house.”
While inside the Capitol, she said, “I thought it was cool. I wanted to be in the middle of the action.”
Defense counsel asked if she had heard that the Electoral Vote certification was over and why was she still entering the Capitol.
Watkins compared it to when Roe v. Wade was overturned; people didn’t stop protesting immediately.
“Are you proud of what you did?” the defense counsel asked.
“Not anymore,” she replied.
“Do you have something to say to the jury?” he went on.
“I interfered with the police and their duties. I’m sorry,” Watkins told the jury.
“I want to say sorry to Christopher Owens [a Metropolitan Police Department officer who testified earlier during the trial],” she continued.
Watkins said she was proud of Parler on Jan. 6, calling it “kind of an echo chamber.” In the aftermath, she said she received many messages attacking her.
“I got defensive, and I tried to downplay everything,” Watkins testified.
In a video presented to the court, Watkins was seen escorting a man who needed medical assistance out of the Capitol; she gave him an inhaler. She then received the mayor’s curfew alert on her phone and made the decision to leave.
About a week later, on Jan. 14, 2021, she left Ohio because she said people were threatening her and her family. She decided to go to the Virginia farm of [defendant] Thomas Caldwell. She left all her weapons, phone, and Caldwell’s contact information, in case the FBI or law enforcement were looking for her. She explained that she thought she would get a ticket for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6.
When she found out that the FBI was looking for her, she drove to Ohio, voluntarily talked to them, and gave them the password to her phone.
Watkins said she decided to attend the Jan. 6 rally in late December 2020 because she enjoyed going to protests; she had attended 13 in total.
It was in her blood, she said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Watkins admitted using Zello, a walkie-talkie app, on Jan. 5 and 6, but denied communicating with the Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, a defendant in the trial.
At the Ellipse, Watkins and other Oath Keepers had an area reserved for them. When then-President Donald Trump was about to finish his speech, Secret Services would not allow the Oath Keepers to stay.
She said they then started to walk toward the Capitol with the intention of providing security at a stage there, and later escorting protesters to their hotels.
“We were sticking together, escorting the VIPs. It was an exciting moment. It was cool. There was no violence on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Watkins testified.
“American flags—it was similar to July Fourth. It was awesome.”
Background
Watkins, who is transgender, joined the Army in 2001 as a man, and told the jurors she had had difficulties with gender identity since early childhood.In 2019, when Watkins was working at Old Navy, she received tornado alerts on her phone, which aroused her interest in assisting in natural disaster situations. She said she thought it would be “cool” to have a rescue team to help people, and created the Ohio State Regular Militia (OSRM) with six other people, including her partner.
Watkins told the court that, in early 2020, she anticipated the riots would be similar to those that took place after Trump won the 2016 presidential election. The OSRM changed from being a volunteer rescue organization to a militia group. Watkins said she and her team wanted to get trained up on personal safety techniques, crowd and riot control, and self-defense shooting. They did not begin training, however, due to the protests that started in 2020, she said.
“Training because you wanted to stop the certification of electoral votes?” asked her attorney.
“Absolutely no,” Watkins responded.
She explained that they mainly provided medical assistance at the protests they attended. The Million MAGA March in Washington, according to Watkins, was disorganized and unprofessional.
Throughout the seven-week trial, prosecutors have shown communications in which Watkins mentioned war and dying, as well as messages related to the 2020 presidential election.
She told the court that, at that time, it was concerning because she had read multiple right-wing media stories that the United Nations would be imposing mandatory vaccines and that Chinese troops would invade through the Canadian border.
Watkins admitted that she was a little too gullible; For her, the threat was the United Nations, not the U.S. government.
Watkins, Rhodes, Caldwell, Kelly Meggs, and Kenneth Harrelson are charged with seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, aiding and abetting, conspiracy to stop an officer from doing his or her job, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and tampering with documents.
Watkins will undergo cross-examination on Nov. 17.
