Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes insisted on the stand Monday that he did not want his militia members to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6—and believes “it was stupid” of his allies to burst into the building with a MAGA mob.
“I think it was stupid to go into the Capitol. One, because it wasn’t our mission,” Rhodes told D.C. federal court jurors on Monday while on the stand in his own defense. “And two, it opened the door for our political enemies to persecute us. And that’s what happened and here we are.”
In what appears to be his strongest denial of his involvement in the insurrection to date, Rhodes claimed that more than 100 members of his far-right militia group went to the nation’s Capitol simply to provide security for Jan. 6 rally-goers and speakers. But once the riots began, several Oath Keeper members went “off-mission” and breached the Capitol, disrupting the electoral certification of President Joe Biden.
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