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U.S. prosecutors filed new charges Friday against the leader of the Oath Keepers and alleged members accused of a seditious plot in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, saying a co-conspirator came to Washington with explosives and detailed charges , that the co-defendant kept a “death list” with the name of a Georgia election official.
The claims come days before a House committee on Jan. 6 holds its next hearing on Tuesday, which is expected to examine links between extremist groups accused of playing a key role in the violence at the Capitol and former President Donald Trump’s impeachment efforts 2020 election through false claims of voter fraud.
In a 28-page filing, prosecutors say a Jan. 19, 2021, law enforcement search of the home of indicted co-defendant Thomas Caldwell, a retired naval intelligence officer from Berryville, Va., turned up a document that included the words “DEATH LIST.” , handwritten at the top with the name of a Georgia elections official and alleged family member of the official. Both were the subject of baseless accusations that they participated in voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, prosecutors said.
“That Caldwell made and maintained a ‘death list’ that included officials involved in the presidential election process—concurrently with his preparations to travel to Washington, D.C.—illustrates his actions during the alleged plot and intent to opposed the transfer of power with force,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy A. Edwards Jr. of Washington wrote, referring to the seditious conspiracy charge against Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes and eight others, including Caldwell.
On Friday night, Caldwell’s attorney, David Fischer, forwarded a statement from his client denying it the charge, which prosecutors first raised in an argument for Caldwell’s pretrial detention in February 2021. A judge then granted Caldwell parole.
“The claim by the Department of Justice that I intended to kill election workers is an absolute, 100 percent disgusting lie. “Unfortunately, the Department of Justice hid from the public the evidence exonerating me by hiding behind protective orders,” the statement read.
Separately, Edwards said the government has evidence that group members from Florida and Arizona allegedly planted semi-automatic rifles and other weapons at a suburban Washington hotel, while a third outfit from North Carolina kept their firearms “ready to go” in a vehicle. means of parking lot.
The prosecutor alleged that another Rhodes co-defendant, Florida’s alleged “state boss” Kelly Meggs, told a cooperating defendant who pleaded guilty in a cooperation agreement with the government that another member of the group from Florida, Jeremy Brown, had come in Washington with explosives in his recreational vehicle, which he left parked in College Park, Maryland. Brown, who has pleaded not guilty to the crime since Jan. 6, has not been charged in the riot plot but was described by prosecutors as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
The government is said to have seized weapons last September from Brown, including two illegal short-barreled firearms from his Tampa home and military grenades from “the same RV that Brown used to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6,” the prosecutor alleged.
Brown’s stand-in attorney — a retired Special Forces soldier and former congressional candidate who is defending himself but is being held pending trial on separate federal gun charges in Florida — did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The latest U.S. charges are contained in court documents required as prosecutors seek to introduce incriminating evidence at the Oath Keepers’ trial, scheduled for Sept. 26, that are not directly related to the crimes they are accused of. The Federal Criminal Rules generally prohibit such extrinsic material, but make an exception for relevant information that is alleged to show motive, intent for a broader charged conspiracy, or is otherwise “intrinsic” to the case.
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Prosecutors say the defendants face charges including conspiring to corruptly obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 election by Congress and resisting with force the inauguration of President Biden. Charging documents allege the group coordinated travel, equipment and firearms and stashed weapons outside Washington, D.C., ready “to respond to Rhodes’ call to take arms at Rhodes’ direction.”
“Caldwell’s trips to Washington, D.C., on January 6, as his statements show, were informed by the belief that the election was fraudulent and that the legal transfer of presidential power must be thwarted by force.” His writings aimed at election workers are directly relevant to this moment,” Edwards said.
Edwards added, “Brown’s statements, firearms and explosives are intrinsic to the co-conspirators’ charged offense as contemporaneous, direct evidence of the manner and means used by the co-conspirators to accomplish the purposes of the charged conspiracy.”
In plea documents, three Oath Keepers defendants who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges admitted to allegations that they were part of a group that forced their way through the doors of the Rotunda after marching in single file up the stairs wearing camo vests, helmets, goggles and Oath Keepers Emblem. They admitted that some had brought rifles to Washington that had been hidden in advance at the Ballston Hotel and one in Vienna.
Rhodes, Caldwell and the other co-defendants have pleaded not guilty. Rhodes, in an interview with The Washington Post in March 2021, said there was no plan to storm the Capitol. He said the group had organized firearms in Northern Virginia in case it was needed as a “quick response force” if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act and mobilized armed groups to stay in office. Rhodes’ attorney declined to comment Friday night on the government’s latest allegations.
The attack on the Capitol came after a rally outside the White House in which Trump called on his supporters to march on Congress. Rioters wounded dozens of police officers and ransacked Capitol offices, halting proceedings as lawmakers were evacuated from the House floor.
Separately, a lawyer for Rhodes said he contacted the House Jan. 6 committee earlier Friday offering to testify before it, provided he was allowed to appear live, in person and unedited, and not from the prison where he is in pre-trial detention.
Rhodes “is not interested in any games,” said attorney Lee Bright, and will speak about his group’s activities in the last election and on Jan. 6, waiving his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Bright said the commission appears to be considering recognizing Rhodes’ conditions, as a practical matter that such an appearance would likely be a court order from the judge, input from prosecutors in his criminal case and transportation from the U.S. Marshals Service.
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