The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight. Convinced the White House had been stolen from Republican Donald Trump, Stewart Rhodes exhorted his followers to action, suggesting they emulate a popular uprising that brought down Yugoslavia’s president two decades earlier. He published a version of his appeal online, headlined, “What We The People Must Do.” “We must now … refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol,” Rhodes declared to fellow Oath Keepers. Authorities allege that Rhodes and his band of extremists would spend the next several weeks amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary training and readying armed teams outside Washington with a singular goal: stopping Joe Biden from becoming president. Their plot would come to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors say, when Oath Keepers wearing helmets and other battle gear were captured on camera shouldering their way through the crowd of angry Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation. Hundreds of pages of court documents in the case against Rhodes and four co-defendants — whose trial opens with jury selection Tuesday in Washington’s federal court — paint a picture of a group so determined to overturn Biden’s election that some members were prepared to lose their lives to do so. The trial is the biggest test so far for the Justice Department’s efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack on the Capitol, a violent assault that challenged the foundations of American democracy. Rioters temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s victory by sheer force, pummeling police officers in hand-to-hand fighting as they rammed their way into the building, forcing Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from the mob. Despite nearly 900 arrests and hundreds of convictions in the riot, Rhodes and four Oath Keeper associates — Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — are the first to stand trial on the rare and difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors will try to show that the insurrection for the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but part of a serious, weekslong plot to stop the transfer of power. The trial could shed new light on Trump’s attempts to cling to power. It comes amid growing legal peril for the former president, who faces multiple investigations, including one by the Justice Department into his handling of sensitive government documents. Defense lawyers for the Oath Keepers will tell jurors the government case is all a lie. The Oath Keepers accuse prosecutors of twisting their words and insist there was never any plan to attack the Capitol. They say they were in Washington to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before the president’s big outdoor rally behind the White House. Their preparations, training, gear and weapons were to protect themselves against potential violence from left-wing antifa activists or to be ready if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to call up a militia. Rhodes’ lawyers have signaled that their defense will focus on his belief that Trump would take that action. “When he believed that the President would issue an order invoking the Insurrection […]

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