Oath Keeper leader wants charges dropped, joins push for new trial venue
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The seditious conspiracy docket in Washington, D.C., has been busy of late as members of the extremist Oath Keepers group have spent recent days scrambling to mount their defense.
There has been a request for an entirely different trial venue in one instance, and in several other instances, many of the defendants have requested that many of the toughest charges they face be dismissed altogether.
After a tense status conference two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ordered several of the Oath Keepers to file their respective motions by mid-April if they wanted to have certain charges dismissed or if they wished to align themselves with others. The next hearing is currently slated for May 6.
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Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell pushed on April 12 to see four of the most severe charges dropped against him from the overarching U.S. v. Rhodes indictment. That included seditious conspiracy. Other co-defendants Kelly Meggs, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, Jessica Watkins, and David Moerschel have since asked to join him.
Thomas Caldwell Motion to Dismiss Counts 1-4 of Indictment by Daily Kos on Scribd
Late Monday afternoon, an attorney for Rhodes, Phillip Linder, filed a motion asking that Rhodes also be allowed to join Caldwell’s motion.
Elmer Rhodes Joins Motion to Dismiss by Daily Kos on Scribd
Beyond dismissal of the seditious conspiracy count, Rhodes, Caldwell, Meggs, Minuta, Hackett, Watkins, and Moerschel also want the obstruction conspiracy charge to be dropped and their respective counts for aiding and abetting that obstruction dropped as well. They say the charge of conspiring to stop an officer from discharging their duties should be wiped away, too.
That defense is, at the very least, creative.
In effect, they argue that the Department of Justice failed to properly state the offense in the seditious conspiracy charge. The government, they say, needs proof that the purpose of the conspiracy on Jan. 6 was to forcibly stop Congress from doing their duty, i.e., “executing the election laws.”
They also argue—curiously—that members of Congress are “constitutionally prohibited” from “executing any law.” Further, the certification process of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6 did not constitute an “execution of any law,” Caldwell’s motion states.
Other charges, like conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding and aiding and abetting that obstruction, should be tossed on a technicality. The use of the word “otherwise,” for example, in the legal definition for the crime of tampering, was pored over at length by Caldwell’s defense attorneys.
In a similar notable filing from Joseph Hackett’s defense attorney Angela Halim, the Department of Justice’s indictment was attacked outright because it accused Oath Keepers, quite simply, of too many “distinct conspiracies.”
Halim said federal prosecutors are unfairly lumping multiple distinct issues into one seditious conspiracy charge.
The multiple alleged conspiracies Halim said were being forced into one count included: 1) The Oath Keepers’ planning from November to December 2020 to stop the transfer of power by force; and 2) the group’s alleged planning to physically stop the certification on Jan. 6.
A third element of the indictment, she said, was also faulty because it suggested an impossibility.
Prosecutors, she argued, wrongly claim that Hackett, Rhodes, and others plotted “stop the transfer of power” after Jan. 6. Really, she said, the “transfer of power” had already begun in earnest in November once the election was complete.
Oath Keeper Joseph Hackett Motion to Dismiss Counts 1 to 4 Indictment Memorandum by Daily Kos on Scribd
Halim asked the judge to drop a tampering charge against Hackett, too.
Prosecutors say Hackett deleted evidence from his phone sometime on or after Jan. 6.
Hackett says those allegations were overly broad and that it would have been impossible for him to know he was under investigation or facing a possible trial when he deleted files from his phone. Plus, he contends, the government must prove that what he deleted would have been relevant to the case against him anyway.
Hackett wants the court to sever the tampering charge from the others he faces. If the judge won’t do that, then he wants to be tried on the tampering charge separate from the conspiracy counts but only after the conspiracy case has been decided. Doing otherwise, his attorney argued, would unfairly prejudice him.
As for defendant Kelly Meggs, his attorney Jonathon Moseley was disbarred in early April after the Virginia State Bar found he violated multiple rules. One of those violations included obstructing an investigation into his conduct.
Mehta formally ordered Moseley to stop filing on Meggs’ behalf as a result, but the attorney kept it up nearly a week afterward, saying he was “caretaker counsel” for Meggs.
In one of his last filings, Moseley argued the toughest charges against Meggs should be dropped because it was simply impossible for Oath Keepers to oppose a transfer of power.
“Not only could such a goal not be accomplished, but beyond that, it is an irrational concept lacking in any basis, in fact, law or common sense,” Moseley wrote.
“This is not a case in which conspirators might attempt to do something they are unable to successfully achieve. It is an irrational concept like dividing by zero. There can be no such thing in law or fact,” he added.
He continued, partially noting the 20th Amendment stipulation on the transfer of power:
“There is nothing in heaven or Earth that can stop the transfer of presidential power, nothing in the universe that can add 1 minute to a president’s term of office. Not even God making the sun appear to stand still would keep a President in office 1 second longer because even if the Earth stopped rotating, it would still be 12:01 PM one minute after noon.”
Meggs also tried and failed to subpoena U.S. Capitol Police for emails, messages, and other recordings related to law enforcement’s discovery of pipe bombs being planted on Jan. 6. That suspect was never found.
If the counts are not dropped against Caldwell—and it is exceedingly unlikely that they would be—he has asked that his trial take place at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (USDC EDVA).
If the trial went on at the Alexandria, Virginia, division of the Eastern District, the jury could be tough.
The district’s Alexandria, Virginia, division is situated in the heart of northern Virginia, a region that is densely populated by government employees and contractors. The region is also made up of thousands of people who work in the defense and intelligence industries, and for the U.S. military.
Other USDC EDVA divisions are located in Richmond, Newport, and Norfolk, Virginia.
So far, the Department of Justice has secured unanimous guilty verdicts on all counts in each of the three jury trials it has brought in its investigation of Jan. 6. They have also all been held in Washington, D.C.
Caldwell’s change of venue request was joined by Connie Meggs, wife of Kelly Meggs. Connie’s charges were split off from her husband’s weeks ago.
Connie Meggs and Caldwell commissioned a survey for prospective jurors on April 15.
According to Meggs’s attorney Juli Haller, 91% of those polled in D.C. admitted to making at least one prejudicial statement about Jan. 6 compared to just 63% of those surveyed in Virginia.
The numbers were even better in Florida, Haller noted, where just 49% of those surveyed made negative statements. The defendants also surveyed prospective jury pools in North Carolina.
No decision on the venue request was yet entered by Mehta late Monday afternoon.
Motion to Transfer Venue Ca… by Daily Kos
Meanwhile, on Monday, Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo’s failure to file a motion for review of his detention order has cost him a bond hearing that was slated for this Thursday.
Prosecutors say Vallejo took orders from Oath Keeper ringleader Elmer Rhodes in the runup to the Jan. 6 attack and that he was responsible for helping to secure hotel rooms where firearms, ammunition, and other weapons to support the assault were stowed.
Vallejo was ordered to remain in jail before his trial after a judge agreed with prosecutors that he posed too great of a danger to the community if released.
Trial dates could change but for now, Oath Keeper defendants Jessica Watkins, Joseph Hackett, Kenneth Harrelson, David Moerschel, and Thomas Caldwell are scheduled for trial in July.
Elmer Rhodes, Roberto Minuta, Brian Ulrich, Edward Vallejo, and Kelly Meggs are presently docketed for trial in September.