Oath Keepers leader Stewie Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison Thursday for seditious conspiracy in his right wing terrorist group’s role in the January 6th insurrection after fat former President Trump’s humiliating defeat in the 2020 election, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.
Speaking to the court before he was sent away for the better part of the next two decades, Rhodes showed no remorse and just spewed out the usual MAGA bullshit like how he’s “a political prisoner” and like Trump, his only crime was “opposing those who are destroying our country,” and contrasting the Oath Keepers with Antifa, who “will throw bleach, urine and other substances you don’t want in your eyes… Antifa will stab people.” You might be forgiven for expecting more from a guy who got a JD from Yale, but then again so did Ted Cruz. “I cannot ignore the text of the Constitution. [The Democrats] have created a Constitutional crisis. Characterizing all Trump supporters as terrorists, racists and fools.. does not help” Rhodes actually said while he supposed to be asking for leniency.
Rhodes’s 18 year bid is by four years the longest single sentence handed down in connection with the Capitol riot and one that DC Circuit Judge Amit Mehta applied the maximum “terrorism” enhancement, telling the court that Rhodes and his minions plotted to destroy “an institution of American democracy at its most important moment, the transfer of power.” The long stay for Rhodes does not at all bode well for the five other Oath Keepers leaders also convicted of seditious conspiracy who will be sentenced in the coming days, or for the four captains of frenemy fascist group the Proud Boys who earlier this month were found guilty on the same charge.