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Kellye SoRelle: Oath Keeper Capper or Potential Pivot?

The government arrested Kellye SoRelle yesterday via an indictment charging three counts of obstruction and one count of trespassing. She’s best known as the lawyer for the Oath Keepers, though for a period she was acting as the President of the militia.

That she was arrested was not surprising. It has been known for some time that she’s the person who advised Rhodes to start deleting evidence of his activities on January 6, which he and others did. She even admitted it to MoJo’s Dan Friedman. Those who did delete their comms have all been charged for deleting evidence. The government even included that in Joshua James’ statement of offense, who is now cooperating with the government.

On January 8, 2021, James received a Signal message, in a group chat that included Rhodes, from an individual he understood to be an attorney for the Oath Keepers that stated, “STEWART: YOU ALL NEED TO DELETE ANY OF YOUR COMMENTS REGARDING WHO DID WHAT. You are under zero obligation to leave them up. You/we have not yet gotten a preservation order instructing us to retain those chat comments. So DELETE THEM. I can’t delete them because this is a legacy Signal chat that doesn’t let me delete comments. Only the comment author can delete a comment. So GET BUSY. DELETE your self-incriminating comments or those that can incriminate others. Start now …”

So it’s unsurprising that she was also charged under 18 USC 1512(b)(2) for corruptly persuading and attempting to corruptly persuade others to delete evidence.

On its face, the indictment against SoRelle is all about capping off the Oath Keeper conspiracy. Her arrest warrant lists the two conspiracies, 22-cr-15 (the Rhodes seditious conspiracy) and 21-cr-28 (the lesser conspiracy now named after Donovan Crowl), as related cases, landing her case before Judge Amit Mehta. All seven of the Oath Keeper prosecutors were listed on the motion to seal her arrest warrant.

At that level, charging her seems like a way to ensure defendants in the sedition trial cannot foist all the blame for deleting those communications off on an uncharged co-conspirator.  In fact, Gateway Pundit, which has invented some of the central conspiracy theories about this case (including one spun directly by SoRelle), yesterday complained that DOJ only charged SoRelle because she recently agreed to testify in Rhodes’ defense.

Gateway Pundit’s earlier conspiracy theory, based on claims made by another cooperating Oath Keeper witness, Jason Dolan, appears to be one of the ways prosecutors managed to argue that her communications were not privileged.

As such, much of this indictment is about capping off the Oath Keeper case. But there are a few details that I find interesting.

First, unlike Michael Greene (the field commander for the Oath Keepers the day of the attack), who was superseded into the Crowl (lesser) conspiracy case on June 22, SoRelle was charged via indictment with conspiracy by herself. By comparison, when DOJ spun Jonathan Walden off onto his own indictment, the conspiracy charge against him was dropped.

Perhaps DOJ treated her this way because she mostly just interacted with Rhodes on January 6, but since she didn’t do anything meriting a sedition charge, she was charged by herself?

But there are other details that make me wonder whether DOJ isn’t doing something more by charging her.

SoRelle was charged by the same grand jury that did the bulk of the investigative work against all January 6 attackers for all of 2021, but which focused especially on the Oath Keepers. Its work seemed to culminate in January with the seditious conspiracy indictment. Since then, its main public work was to supersede Greene into the lesser conspiracy, 17 months after it was convened, as well as supserseding the Rhodes indictment to tweak how sedition was charged, also in that 17th month.

But the indictment against SoRelle means that grand jury is still at work in the 19th month after it was convened. Grand juries are usually convened for 18 months, so this seems to suggest the Oath Keeper grand jury has been extended, and extended (thus far) solely to charge someone whose phone the government seized last September.

Meanwhile, SoRelle’s indictment seems to have been initialed by Jocelyn Ballantine.

Up until now, Ballantine was known only to have a (behind-the-scenes) role in managing the Proud Boys investigation, which is not only less orderly than the Oath Keepers investigation, but seems to be understaffed, particularly as compared to the consistent 7-person team that has relentlessly pursued the Oath Keepers.

One reason you might charge SoRelle, by herself, on a conspiracy indictment is to add others to it. And while she’s best known for her role with the Oath Keepers and this indictment is closely tied to the Oath Keepers prong of the investigation, she actually has a number of ties to other key players in January 6.

She was present at the January 4, 2021 parking garage meeting between Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio, for example. She would have been a key facilitator for it. At the time, she was serving as the lawyer for both the Oath Keepers and Latinos for Trump. (It was via Tarrio’s involvement in Latinos for Trump that he went on December tour of the White House, arranged by Bianca Gracia, who was also at that garage meeting.)

As Ryan Reilly noted yesterday, SoRelle was also a volunteer for Lawyers for Trump, and in that guise, Rhodes tried to get her to put him in touch with people in Trump’s orbit. SoRelle claims that she declined to do that.

In the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes tried to get the organization’s general counsel, Kellye SoRelle, to put him in touch with the White House, she told NBC News.

In addition to her work with the Oath Keepers, SoRelle was a volunteer for Lawyers for Trump during the 2020 election and was in contact with many of the people fighting a doomed legal battle to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election and keep former President Donald Trump in office. The contacts include, she said, people in Rudy Giuliani’s and Sidney Powell’s camps, as well as those inside the administration, although she added that she “wasn’t, like, communicating with Trump directly.”

Rhodes wanted her to put him in touch with the White House. “He was hitting me up for a contact,” said SoRelle, a family law lawyer who previously ran for the Texas state House. “He didn’t have any access points.”

As he prepared an open letter calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Rhodes asked SoRelle to send it to the White House. She says she declined.

SoRelle has been caught making false claims to the press before.

Finally, in the clip of SoRelle’s testimony to the January 6 Committee that has been made public, she described how Roger Stone, Alex Jones, and Ali Alexander took the lead on planning the Stop the Steal events.

JAMIE RASKIN: Kelly Sorrell, a lawyer who assists the Oath Keepers and a volunteer lawyer for the Trump campaign, explained to the committee how Roger Stone and other figures brought extremists of different stripes and views together. [Begin videotape]

UNKNOWN: You mentioned that Mr. Stone wanted to start the Stop the Steal series of rallies. Who did you consider the leader of these rallies? It sounds like from what you just said, it was Mr. Stone, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Ali Alexander. Is that correct?

KELLY SORRELL: Those are the ones that became like the — the center point for everything. [End videotape]

In other words, while SoRelle didn’t breach the Capitol in body armor like the rest of the Oath Keepers, she was (along with Roger Stone) one of the key pivots between the Oath Keepers and the rest of the organizing effort behind January 6. She was networked with other planners in a way that even Rhodes was not.

For over a year, I’ve been describing that the elegant thing about the obstruction conspiracy charges DOJ has used to charge the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and others, is those separate conspiracies might one day start to coalesce via the nodes between them. Kellye SoRelle has, by all appearances, been charged in a conspiracy with the Oath Keepers.But if she also conspired on other aspects of January 6 with other people and organizations, including White House lawyers, then the various existing conspiracies might network into a larger conspiracy.

The lead prosecutor on SoRelle’s case, incidentally, also happens to be the lead prosecutor on Owen Shroyer’s prosecution.

Update: Corrected that SoRelle stepped down as President when Rhodes was arrested.

Stewart Rhodes’ Detention Hearing Clarifies Investigative Challenges

Last April, I noted that Stewart Rhodes was on overlapping phone calls with Kelly Meggs and Person Ten (since identified as Mike Simmons AKA Greene) that suggested Rhodes had conferenced the two together.

We now know that about a month after that, the FBI interviewed both Rhodes Simmons AKA Greene and obtained their phones. Here’s what Simmons AKA Greene said about his calls during this period in his second interview.

We have yet to see Rhodes’ interview report (it must not be that helpful, or Meggs or Kenneth Harrelson would have released it). Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy described that there were tens of thousands of Signal texts on Rhodes phone, and it took a good deal of time to sift through that all for both exculpatory and inculpatory evidence.

Whether just those interviews or call records, the investigation has confirmed I was right. Here’s how that call appears in the sedition conspiracy indictment charging Rhodes and Meggs, but not Simmons, unsealed last month.

92. At 2:32pm., MEGGS placed a phone call to RHODES, who was already on the phone with the operation leader. RHODES conferenced MEGGS into the call.

The call was one of the contentious issues in a detention hearing for Rhodes before Judge Amit Mehta yesterday that illustrates why even this investigation has taken so long.

Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy argued that the call suggested that, before the Stack busted into the Capitol, Rhodes encouraged the intrusion in some way. Rhodes’ attorney James Bright, on the other hand, noted that all three men have denied they talked about busting into the building. Mehta seemed reasonably convinced by Rakoczy’s inference — but absent more proof about what was said, wasn’t sure that was strong enough to hold Rhodes on.

Judge Mehta didn’t resolve the detention question yesterday. Rakoczy also presented evidence that the third party custodians proposed by Rhodes weren’t entirely forthright about their ties to the Oath Keepers in an earlier detention hearing. Plus, Mehta seemed unconvinced that placing Rhodes in the custody of family members who would be in a different house (he would share a building with no Internet access with older adults) would provide enough supervision. One way or another, though, Rhodes will either be under home incarceration or remain jailed.

Which made the hearing more interesting for the way it revealed certain things about the case.

Take Mike Simmons AKA Greene, currently referred to as the “operation leader” in indictments. He called into the hearing as a potential witness for Rhodes (he failed to keep his second pseudonym secret before other journalists called in), meaning he was willing to testify under oath and be cross-examined about the substance of that call. That makes it quite clear he is not cooperating with the government. Which, in turn, means that the government simply hasn’t found probable cause to charge him yet (unlike Rhodes, he hasn’t left a string of damning comments online and on his cell phone). The government believes he didn’t tell the truth in two interviews last May, but thus far they’re not prepared to charge him.

Part of the problem pertains to that phone call. The government has multiple cooperating witnesses to what Meggs did in Florida before the riot. They’ve got cooperating witnesses to what Meggs did inside the Capitol. They’ve got a cooperating witness implicating Joshua James’ actions that day. They may have a witness to James’ side of conversations with Simmons AKA Greene from the Willard Hotel, where the Oath Keepers were with Roger Stone.

But because all three men on that critical phone call — Rhodes, Simmons AKA Greene, and Meggs — remain uncooperative, the government can’t prove what happened on it. The government likely needs to flip one of them or James to get further.

Which may be why the attorney for Jonathan Walden, Thomas Spina, submitted a motion to continue yesterday, discussing a, “possible resolution of this case.” Notably, the motion was dated February 15, but it stated that a reverse proffer necessary to conduct what must be plea discussions couldn’t happen until February 11, which would have been last Friday. If Walden has key information prosecutors need to move further in its investigation into what the Oath Keepers were doing with Roger Stone, he can likely demand a pretty sweet plea deal.

There was one other really fascinating development yesterday. Rhodes’ attorney, Bright, argued that everything Rhodes did was designed to comply with the law. The Quick Reaction Force remained, all the time, in VA, even when Ed Vallejo offered to bring in arms. Bright argued that was proof that Rhodes didn’t take the opportunity to arm when he could have.

More interesting still, it’s clear Bright will argue that, under an interpretation of the Insurrection Act, the President can rely on private militias. That is, Rhodes is going to argue that an insurrection would be legal.

That’ll be an interesting legal debate!

There are factual problems with Rhodes’ story that I’ll let the prosecutors unpack at a future time.

But yesterday’s hearing confirms something I laid out some time ago: Each step prosecutors take away from those who trespassed, defendants will be able to make First Amendment challenges to their prosecution, however unbelievable, that will make prosecution more difficult. To get from Stewie to Roger Stone, I’m sure they’ll need some more cooperators.

And until then, DOJ will be able to make a persuasive inference about what happened on that phone, but not direct proof.

Update, February 19: Last night Judge Mehta detained Rhodes. Interestingly, AUSA Kathryn Rakoczy stated that she agrees Rhodes shouldn’t be housed in the DC jail with the other Jan6ers, so he may stay in Texas. The Oath Keepers investigation is run so much more smartly than the Proud Boys one.

The Disappearing Willard Hotel and the Accused Seditionists’ Other Interlocutors

Just as sedition bears down on Roger Stone, the government has put a curtain over what they know about his role in it. The government has moved on from Stone, it seems, to other interesting Oath Keeper interlocutors.

Way back in May, I noted how judicious DOJ was being with statements from Stewart Rhodes — referred to officially as Person One back in his halcyon pre-sedition charge days — in the charging documents for Oath Keepers. Within a few days that month, DOJ added to its insurrection narrative a December 14, 2020 Rhodes post calling for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act via James Breheny’s charging documents. The iteration of the Oath Keeper conspiracy released at the same time (the fourth) introduced Rhodes’ November 9 GoToMeeting discussion of the Insurrection Act that continues to appear in the indictments.

For eight months, in other words, DOJ has been engaged in a slow-reveal of its case against Rhodes.

Now, in the sedition indictment bearing Rhodes’ name, we get a whole lot more of what Rhodes was saying:

  • Calls for civil war as soon as a it became clear Biden should win
  • Rhodes’ adoption of a Serbian (!!!) model for his civil war
  • An oblique comment — dated to “around this time” of the Inauguration — about Rhodes messaging others to organize local militias to oppose Biden’s Administration

Most of the new comments aren’t as scintillating as the catalog describing the personal arsenal Rhodes was purchasing, though, and a few of the new Rhodes comments included were public before.

There are three comments about Rhodes’ communications, though, that I find intriguing because they seem to hint at other interlocutors with the accused seditionists that we may not know about yet.

The first doesn’t even involve Rhodes directly. Rather, it relays Roberto Minuta describing to someone else that 1) Minuta had spoken directly with Rhodes the night of December 18 and 2) Minuta was sharing with someone apparently outside the Oath Keepers how Rhodes felt.

28. Also on December 19, 2020, MINUTA messaged another individual, “Oath Keepers president is pretty disheartened. He feels like it’s go time, the time for peaceful protest is over in his eyes. I was talking to him last night.”

This wasn’t in the prior indictment and I don’t recall it appearing in any other filings in the case (Minuta was not detained, so there’s less about him in the public record). Unless this was originally on the Facebook account Minuta allegedly deleted, there doesn’t seem to be any reason DOJ wouldn’t have obtained this message when they exploited Minuta’s phone. If they’ve had it for months, then the simplest explanation for its inclusion is that this indictment is all about Rhodes, and the comment captures Rhodes’ commitment to violence. In addition, this comment exhibits a closeness between Minuta and Rhodes (which we’ve seen in earlier charging documents) that may be useful from an evidentiary standpoint.

But I suspect it serves an additional purpose. Minuta wrote it not long after the December MAGA March in DC. While there, he had been hanging out with Proud Boys, including Dominic Pezzola (who like Minuta is from upstate New York). It comes after Mike Flynn’s call for insurrection. After Trump tweeted out a promise for Wild Protests on December 19, a ton of aspiring insurrectionists, both organized and not, started making plans to come to DC. In short, this was a key time in the lead-up to the operation, and Minuta was surprisingly well-connected (for a tattoo artist!!!) within the movement. So I suspect his interlocutor here is of some interest (and it’s even possible the government obtained the text from that interlocutor, not Minuta).

An exchange that Kelly Meggs had with Rhodes on Christmas 2020 is similar.

34. On December 25, 2020, MEGGS messaged the OKFL Hangout Chat, in reference to the Joint Session, “We need to make those senators very uncomfortable with all of us being a few hundred feet away.” RHODES then wrote, “I think Congress will screw him [President Trump] over. The only chance we/he has is if we scare the shit out of them and convince them it will be torches and pitchforks time is they don’t do the right thing. But I don’t think they will listen.”

As we recently saw in Proud Boy Matthew Greene’s statement of offense, using proximity to pressure members of Congress (and Pence), became well formulated enough that even a low-level Proud Boy would understand it by the day of the insurrection. Here, both Meggs (who is the Florida-based Oath Keeper who boasted of forging an alliance with the Proud Boys) and Rhodes enunciate this goal, but do so twelve days before the actual attack. As with the Minuta comment, my guess is that the his exchange reflects communication with (at a minimum) the Proud Boys about this shared goal of — in Rhodes’ formulation — terrorizing Congress. It certainly makes it clear that the intent of mobbing the Capitol was formulated well in advance of the event.

There’s one more example. For some reason, DOJ provides the exact time (without time zone) that Rhodes wrote, “There is no standard political or legal way out of this” on December 31, 2020.

40. RHODES and his co-conspirators used the Leadership Intel Chat and other Signal group chats to plan for January 6, 2021. On December 31, 2020, at approximately 10:08 p.m., RHODES wrote to the Leadership Intel Chat, “There is no standard political or legal way out of this.”

For the purposes of the indictment, this shows mens rea that the Yale Law grad leading this insurrection recognized what they were going to do next was not legal. But it also seems to reflect a response (thus the timing) to something — one I haven’t been able to guess yet. The comment comes before Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert’s lawsuit against Mike Pence, the last of a long series of ridiculous “legal” efforts, failed spectacularly. But it comes at around the same time that even Sean Hannity was beginning to give up.

For example, on December 31, 2020, you texted Mr. Meadows the following:

“We can’t lose the entire WH counsels office. I do NOT see January 6 happening the way he is being told. After the 6 th. [sic] He should announce will lead the nationwide effort to reform voting integrity. Go to Fl and watch Joe mess up daily. Stay engaged. When he speaks people will listen.”

I’m not saying that Rhodes was in contact with Hannity: But something seems to have happened just before 10:08 PM (in whatever time zone) that elicited this response which is not dissimilar from where Hannity’s brain was at the time. And if it was non-public (as Hannity’s panic was), then it suggests Rhodes may have been responding to a well-connected interlocutor.

So it’s not so much that the sedition indictment quotes Rhodes as saying really interesting things. Rather, it seems to suggest he and others were saying things to some interesting interlocutors.

Even as the government is hinting at other interesting interlocutors of the accused seditionists, as I noted above, DOJ has entirely hidden the prior back-and-forth between the Oath Keepers and the Willard Hotel. This back-and-forth involving people who were guarding Roger Stone at the Willard that morning first started to show in the Third Superseding Indictment. Once Jonathan Walden — the guy now charged by himself — got added, the indictments included this exchange:

At 9:36 a.m., WALDEN texted JAMES, “Willard hotel?” At 9:51 a.m., WALDEN placed a phone call to JAMES, which is recorded as missed. At 9:52 a.m., WALDEN texted JAMES, “I’m here, awaiting instruction.” At 10:37 a.m., JAMES placed a phone call to WALDEN, which lasted 2 seconds.

Then last month, Kenneth Harrelson released Mike Simmons’ [Person Ten] 302s (purportedly in a desperate bid to adopt his lies, but possibly also to let others know what FBI had been investigation in May).

They revealed that Joshua James, who was in charge of the security detail at the Willard, called in several times to Simmons and seems to have cited Stone’s gripe about being treated poorly to Simmons.

This is what I was referring to in this post about the effect of disappearing Mark Grods, the one overt cooperator who was at the Willard that morning, from all last week’s indictments. Several decisions made in the structure of these most recent indictments — spinning Walden off by himself, disappearing Grods, focusing on the activities of two stacks in the sedition indictment (and thereby starting the narrative at a later point in time), remaining coy about the present status of Simmons, and eliminating James and Minuta in the Crowl indictment — had the effect of eliminating the coordination with the Willard from the sedition indictment altogether.

Poof! Where’s Roger?

Trust me. I don’t think DOJ has decided that the Oath Keepers’ presence at the Willard was unimportant. On the contrary. I think they’ve just decided to move onto making other people sweat about their communications with now-charged seditionists appearing in the indictment, while hiding how much more they’ve learned about the Willard in recent weeks.

Stewie’s Assault Rifle: Comings and Goings in the Sedition Militia

I’d like to return to what DOJ did with the Oath Keeper indictments.

As I explained, one thing the sedition indictment did is provide DOJ an easy way to split the unwieldy 17-person indictment into two trials. The first, the sedition trial, includes a barely manageable 11 people, all of whom played a leadership role and/or an active role in putting together the Quick Reaction Force stashed at the Comfort Inn in Ballston.

The second, with seven people charged, named “Crowl” after Donovan Crowl, is still just a conspiracy to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power, though charged under the obstruction statute (18 USC 1512(k)), making the potential sentence for the conspiracy charge higher even for those who, like James Beeks, really just hopped on a stack at the last minute. On top of everything else, these defendants now face the prospect of going to trial after what will surely be a high profile sedition trial, which will make it a lot harder to convince a jury of one’s innocence.

In addition, curiously, DOJ charged Jonathan Walden by himself with just obstruction and trespassing.

Whether DOJ charged Walden by himself in preparation of a plea from him or for some other reason, charging him by himself makes a change in naming convention a lot easier.

In past Oath Keeper conspiracy indictments, DOJ referred to charged defendants in all-caps, those who entered cooperating plea deals in standard text, and those who hadn’t been charged yet using a number system, with Person One being Rhodes, as in this paragraph from the December indictment.

The Crowl indictment generally adheres to this practice, listing both those charged in Crowl and those charged with sedition at the beginning to make it clear it’s all one conspiracy.

But because of the way the Crowl indictment is scoped — focusing on what the sedition indictment calls “Stack One” (the one that busted into the Capitol in spectacular fashion) — certain people are not named at all. Roberto Minuta and Joshua James from the sedition indictment aren’t there, Walden, now spun off on his own is not there.

And cooperating witness, Mark Grods, is not there, at all. Whatever references there are to him just refer to him as a co-conspirator.

It’s not just Grods. A bunch of people, formerly numbers, are just co-conspirators now. Perhaps DOJ did that to sow as much paranoia as possible, so that the defendants have no idea who has flipped and who hasn’t. But I’m particularly interested in Grods’ absence for reasons I’ll explain in a follow-up.

Anyway, this naming convention is most notable with the treatment of Person Ten, who has been identified as Michael Simmons by Mother Jones and others, but who is referred to in the sedition indictment as “the operation leader.”

As with Walden, it’s not entirely clear what’s up with Simmons. It cannot be the case that DOJ decided he had no criminal exposure. As prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy noted in December, Simmons’ attempts to pretend he didn’t know about the insurrection in May FBI interviews “lack credibility.”

Person Ten’s Statements Are Lacking in Credibility

Person Ten, as an uncharged individual who was aware that others have already been charged, had a motive to downplay or disregard both his own involvement and any preplanning efforts. And documentary evidence contradicts Person Ten’s blanket denials. For instance, on October 8, 2021, the government disclosed a Signal chat thread named “Jan 5/6 DC Op Intel team,” which included Person One, Person Ten, codefendant Joshua James, and about seven other individuals. On the Signal thread, shortly before 2:00 p.m. on January 6, a participant posted a video titled “live stream of patriots storming capital.” Another participant asked, “Are they actually Patriots – not those who were going to go in disguise as Patriots and cause trouble[?]” Person Ten authoritatively answered, “[T]here [sic] patriots.” Person One added, “Actual Patriots. Pissed off patriots[.] Like the Sons of Liberty were pissed off patriots[.]” Codefendant Joshua James followed with, “Were coming to Capitol ETA 30 MIN[.]”

The Sixth Superseding indictment alleges that at 2:14 p.m. on January 6, Person Ten informed the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” Signal chat that “The[y] have taken ground at the capital,” and, “We need to regroup any members who are not on mission[.]” ECF 513 ¶ 125. At 3:05 p.m.— twenty minutes after Defendant Harrelson and other codefendants breached the Capitol, and ten minutes before Defendant James and his second wave of coconspirators breached the same doors—Person Ten also messaged another individual, “Were [sic] storming the capital.”

So something had to have happened with Simmons, with a cooperation deal a likely explanation. That’s why I’m interested in a few details laid out in the sedition indictment.

The main QRF for the people charged in the sedition indictment was (as I never tire of saying) in the Ballston Comfort Inn. Here’s what these guys looked like toting their gun cases around on luggage carts on the surveillance footage.

But before Kelly Meggs and Thomas Caldwell and others settled on the Ballston Comfort Inn for the QRF, Rhodes offered to store weapons for Meggs in the trunk of Simmons’ car.

50. On January 2, 2021, RHODES messaged MEGGS on Signal, “If you want to stow weapons with [the operation leader] you can. He’ll have a secure car trunk or his hotel room (or mine).” MEGGS responded, “Last night call … we discussed a QRF RP so we may do that. As well as the NC team has a hotel room close by.” RHODES messaged, “Ok, We WILL have a QRF. this situation calls for it.” [my emphasis]

The sedition indictment seems to describe Joshua James dropping off weapons at the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, VA.

68. On January 5, 2021, JAMES dropped off firearms and ammunition that he, ULRICH, and other co-conspirators had transported to the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Virginia, where RHODES, JAMES, MINUTA, and others were staying.

One of the “others” staying at the Hilton Garden Inn referred to in this paragraph, the earlier indictment makes clear, was Simmons.

On January 4,2021, PERSON TEN checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Virginia. The room was reserved and paid for using a credit card in PERSON ONE’s name.

Anyway, it’s not entirely clear whether that paragraph 68 means that James dropped off weapons he had driven to Vienna at the Comfort Inn, or whether he brought those weapons to the Hilton Garden Inn and they stayed there. It’s worth noting, though, that by leaving Grods out of the sedition indictment, DOJ left out this paragraph from earlier indictments.

On January 2, 2021, Grods messaged JAMES on Signal and asked, “So, I guess I am taking full gear less weapons? Just reading through all the posts. Would rather have it and not need it.” JAMES responded, “Yeah full gear… QRF will have weapons Just leave em home.”

That is, by leaving Grods out, DOJ got to leave out some details about the fate of James’ weapons, too.

And while the sedition indictment has a ton of new details about Rhodes serially arming himself as he drove to insurrection…

On January 3, 2021, RHODES departed Granbury, Texas, and began traveling to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. While traveling, RHODES spent approximately $6,000 in Texas on an AR-platform rifle and firearms equipment, including sights, mounts, triggers, slings, and additional firearms attachments.

[snip]

On January 4, 2021, while still traveling toward the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, RHODES spent approximately $4,500 in Mississippi on firearms equipment, including sights, mounts, an optic plate, a magazine, and various firearms parts.

… The sedition indictment provides not one detail of where Stewie’s personal arsenal ended up once he got to VA. It doesn’t say he kept all those weapons at the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna. It doesn’t say the weapons got moved to the Comfort Inn in Ballston.

The sedition indictment does, however, explain that Rhodes and Simmons drove to DC together the morning of insurrection.

At approximately 8:30 a.m., RHODES and the operation leader, and others departed a hotel in Virginia for Washington, D.C., and drove to the Capitol area.

So Rhodes and Simmons traveled to DC in something that had a trunk, like the one days earlier where, Rhodes said, Meggs could stash his weapons.

And I find that interesting because Rhodes and Simmons weren’t together when the insurrection kicked off. Earlier indictments make clear that Rhodes was trying to meet up with Simmons as everyone started converging on the Capitol.

At 2:06 p.m, PERSON ONE sent another message to the Leadership Signal Chat asking for PERSON TEN’s location before stating, “I’m trying to get to you.”

And in fact, Rhodes kept trying to get people to come to the south side of the Capitol, even though all the action was happening north of there.

At 2:25 p.m. PERSON ONE forwarded PERSON TEN’s message (“The have taken ground at the capital[.] We need to regroup any members who are not on mission.”) to the Leadership Signal Chat and instructed: “Come to South Side of Capitol on steps” and then sent a ‘photograph showing the southeast side of the Capitol.

Rhodes’ 2:06 text got cut from the sedition indictment, though his 2:25 one made the cut.

At 2:32, as the Stack was assembling outside the East steps of the Capitol, Kelly Meggs called Rhodes and got conferenced into an already existing call with Simmons.

At 2:32 p.m., MEGGS places a phone call to RHODES, who was already on the phone with the operation leader. RHODES conferenced MEGGS into the call.

Minutes later, after Kelly Meggs and the first stack busted into the Capitol, and Meggs walked towards the office of Pelosi (whom he threatened to kill on election day) with Joseph Hackett and others, Hackett came back out to the entrance as if he was trying to meet up with someone, only to give up and leave.

The detention memo suggests they — apparently including Berry and Connie Meggs, though the detention motion doesn’t mention them — went from here to stand outside Pelosi’s office, and then Hackett — apparently by himself — came back through the Rotunda, stood outside the East Door, looking outward, as if waiting to meet with someone.

Hackett then enters back into the Capitol, goes back to where he (apparently) left Moerschel, Harrelson, and Meggs, along with Berry and Connie Meggs (though they aren’t mentioned) and then he and Moerschel exit the building.

Neither Rhodes nor Simmons entered the Capitol.

To be clear: we have no idea what happened to Simmons and it’s not clear whom Hackett was looking for as Kelly Meggs attempted to hunt down Nancy Pelosi.

But I think it distinctly possible that Simmons drove Stewie’s weapons into DC. Which — particularly if there were a plot to assassinate Nancy Pelosi — would increase Simmons’ exposure significantly.

Update: I just re-read Mike Simmons’ 302s. And he claims that he parked by the Jefferson Memorial.

That’s the location of the “sea” landing point for the QRF teams.

On the evening of January 2, 2021, at about 5:43 p.m., KELLY MEGGS posted a map of Washington, D.C. in the Leadership Signal Chat, along with the message, “1 if by land] North side of Lincoln Memorial[,] 2 if by sea[,] Corner of west basin and Ohio is a water transport landing 11” KELLY MEGGS continued, “QRF rally points[.] Water of the bridges get closed.”

Joshua James’ Frequent January 6 Updates on His Jilted VIPer

The other day, Kenneth Harrelson invented a premise to publish the 302s from Mike “Person 10” Simmons, the Oath Keepers’ still-uncharged field commander for January 6.

In a response (technically a surreply), AUSA Kathryn Rakoczy made it clear the government believes Simmons was being dishonest. She provides several data points to demonstrate that, contrary to what he told the FBI, Simmons was well aware about the breach of the Capitol … which raises questions why he hasn’t been charged, yet.

Person Ten, as an uncharged individual who was aware that others have already been charged, had a motive to downplay or disregard both his own involvement and any preplanning efforts. And documentary evidence contradicts Person Ten’s blanket denials. For instance, on October 8, 2021, the government disclosed a Signal chat thread named “Jan 5/6 DC Op Intel team,” which included Person One, Person Ten, codefendant Joshua James, and about seven other individuals. On the Signal thread, shortly before 2:00 p.m. on January 6, a participant posted a video titled “live stream of patriots storming capital.” Another participant asked, “Are they actually Patriots – not those who were going to go in disguise as Patriots and cause trouble[?]” Person Ten authoritatively answered, “[T]here [sic] patriots.” Person One added, “Actual Patriots. Pissed off patriots[.] Like the Sons of Liberty were pissed off patriots[.]” Codefendant Joshua James followed with, “Were coming to Capitol ETA 30 MIN[.]”

The Sixth Superseding indictment alleges that at 2:14 p.m. on January 6, Person Ten informed the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” Signal chat that “The[y] have taken ground at the capital,” and, “We need to regroup any members who are not on mission[.]” ECF 513 ¶ 125. At 3:05 p.m.— twenty minutes after Defendant Harrelson and other codefendants breached the Capitol, and ten minutes before Defendant James and his second wave of coconspirators breached the same doors—Person Ten also messaged another individual, “Were [sic] storming the capital.”

Particularly given the confirmation that the government believes he was lying, I’d like to point to some redacted references to a VIP that Joshua James was guarding who was bitching that he wasn’t getting VIP treatment.

This is likely Roger Stone. That’s true because — as Dan Friedman reported — James was “guarding” Stone that day (and Simmons guarded Stone the previous day), the name seems to fit, and Stone has publicly complained about his treatment that day.

While exchanging calls with Simmons, James traveled from the Willard Hotel, in downtown Washington—where he had been leading a security detail guarding Stone—to the Capitol.

What appears to be the first reference to this person also seems to fit the name, which would be the full name, Roger Stone, on first reference. Roberto Minuta, Jonathan Walden, and the now-cooperating Mark Grods were also guarding Stone.

Which brings us to the middle reference. Simmons claims that James called him every time his VIP moved.

Only, if that VIP was Roger Stone, he didn’t move. By his own account he stayed at the Willard before taking his bruised ego and leaving town.

If that’s right, it means Simmons was trying to explain multiple calls with James, and to do so, he offered the bullshit excuse that Stone, who by his own account never left the Willard, kept moving.

These calls are earlier than the ones that the indictments disclose. They would effectively serve to warn Roger Stone of this investigative interest.

But they also suggest that the Oath Keepers were keeping their operational lead closely informed of what some VIP — likely Roger Stone — was up to at the Willard that day.

Update: Way back in April — April!! — I argued that Person Ten — Simmons — played the role of a communication pivot that day, including at one point seemingly being on a 3-way call with Rhodes and Kelly Meggs.

Highlighted in yellow, Person Ten has a series of calls back and forth with Joshua James, pre-Golf Cart Grand Theft. Right in the middle of it all, someone — not described in this indictment — informs the Signal group as a whole that “the[y] have taken ground” and “we need to regroup any members who are not on mission.” Shortly thereafter, James and Minuta launch the Grand Theft Golf Cart to get to the Capitol, where Minuta taunts the police, preventing them from moving to reinforce the overrun Capitol on the other side, and the members of The Stack leave Trump’s speech prematurely and go to the Capitol. That is, Person Ten calls for reinforcements (Rhodes repeats his Signal text), and then Minuta and James in the golf carts and The Stack converge on the northeast side of the Capitol to breach a new entry point.

Now consider the pink highlight: Unless the government or I have made a mistake in the timing, Person Ten and Kelly Meggs are both on the phone with Stewart Rhodes together. Because of the length of Person Ten’s calls, it overlaps entirely with Rhodes’ call with Meggs (which — again, unless there’s an error of timing — means Rhodes either has two phones or either via conferencing or a hold, had both on the same phone at the same time).

In either case, Person Ten seems to have a key role as a communication pivot between different groups of Oath Keepers.

The calls that Harrelson — as a Floridian, someone with ties to Stone — revealed predated all these, to a period when Stone was at the Willard and everyone else was at the Ellipse.

The Oath Keepers Dilemma: The Government Has Threatened Yet Another Indictment

The remaining 15 Oath Keeper conspiracy defendants have a status hearing today.

A lot has happened since the last status hearing the bulk of them had on June 1, 2021. Most notably, Graydon Young — co-defendant Laura Steele’s brother — pled guilty on June 23, just over a week ago. His cooperation with prosecutors will implicate the entire Stack, especially Joseph Hackett, Jessica Watkins, his sister, as well as the participants on a OK FL DC OP Jan 6 listserv (in addition to Watkins and Hackett, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jason Dolan, and William Isaacs).

Then, on Wednesday, Mark Grods pled guilty. His cooperation will implicate fellow Alabaman Joshua James (who got Grods to delete some files), Meggs, Watkins, Robert Minuta, Stewart Rhodes, and others who were on chats Grods was part of, as well as everyone involved in the Golf Cart chase and prior events at the Willard Hotel, adding Jonathan Walden to the mix.

Yesterday (or today, depending on which defendant you ask) was a deadline that Judge Amit Mehta set on June 1 for all motions unrelated to discovery (with the expectation that the late added defendants would probably need more time).

Thomas Caldwell (who can be implicated primarily by the Ohioans, the still unindicted Person Three, Grods, and possibly some other VA militia members not charged in this conspiracy) has been filing motions. He filed a marginally serious motion to dismiss everything on June 15, and filed a frivolous motion to transfer venue yesterday.

Yesterday, the deadline, both Joshua James and Kenneth Harrelson filed some motions. The former filed a motion to dismiss an assault charge and an obstruction charge against himself, as well as for a Bill of Particulars. The latter filed a motion to dismiss the counts of the indictment charged against him. The Meggses had earlier filed a motion for a Bill of Particulars.

But thus far, almost everyone is asking for an extension to file their own motions. Here’s a summary of what’s on the books thus far (Dolan, Hackett, Isaacs, and Walden would have an extension in any case, on account of their late addition):

  1. Thomas Caldwell: Motion to Dismiss, Motion to Change Venue, Motion for Extension
  2. Dominick Crowl: Motion for 60 Day Extension, Motion to Adopt
  3. Jason Dolan: Motion for Extension
  4. Joseph Hackett
  5. Kenneth Harrelson: Motion to Adopt Caldwell and James Motions, Motion for Extension, Motion to Dismiss Charges against Him
  6. William Isaacs
  7. Joshua James: Motion to Adopt, Motion to Dismiss Counts 8 and 13, Motion for Bill of Particulars, Motion for Extension
  8. Connie Meggs: Motion to Join Caldwell’s Motion, Motion for 60 Day Extension
  9. Kelly Meggs: Motion to Adopt Caldwell’s Motion (including a cursory adoption of his obstruction charge)
  10. Roberto Minuta (Minuta’s attorney has had some health limitations so would need an extension anyway): Motion for 30 Day Extension
  11. Benny Parker: Motion for at least 60 Day Extension, Motion to Adopt Harrelson and Caldwell, though not adopting Caldwell’s “partisan surplusage”
  12. Sandi Parker: Motion to Join Caldwell Motion, Motion for Extension
  13. Laura Steele: Motion to be able to go on vacation, Motion to Join Caldwell, Motion for at least 60-Day Extension
  14. Jonathan Walden
  15. Jessica Watkins: Motion to Join Caldwell’s Dismissal, Motion for 60 Day Extension

Between these requests, the government has gotten defendants to waive Speedy Trial for at least 30 more days as they contemplate the legal dilemma they’re facing.

It’s true that most defendants cite the voluminous discovery before them. A few claim they have not yet had an adequate tour of the Capitol. Harrelson’s motion quotes several paragraphs of boilerplate from the government.

But a comment from James’ Motion for Extension is perhaps the most telling. It asserts that defendants have been told there’s still yet another indictment on the way.

Because the government has made clear that an additional indictment (which could include more charges or more defendants) is possible, and because Mr. James is unaware of which, if any, currently charged defendant will be proceeding to trial, it is impossible to assess, prepare, and file motions regarding severance of counts or defendants at this time.

It also suggests that it’s possible none of the currently charged defendants will actually proceed to trial.

Short of adding Stewart Rhodes, there are few places this indictment will go except to make the terrorism or insurrection claims more explicit.

Which may explain why James, one of the remaining key players who would be able to trade a lesser sentence for a cooperation deal, suggests no one may go to trial.