Oath Keepers leader wants trial delayed at least 90 days

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes asked a federal judge on Tuesday to delay his Jan. 6 trial for at least 90 days, saying he terminated two of his attorneys after a “breakdown” in communication.

Rhodes is set to go on trial on Sept. 26 alongside other members of the group for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, but he argued the delay is necessary for his new lawyer to get acquainted with the case.

“Rhodes has had a complete, or near-complete breakdown of communication between himself and his prior counselors,” Rhodes’s new attorney, Edward Tarpley, wrote in the filing.

Tarpley said Rhodes had not spoken on the phone with his previous attorneys since Aug. 10 and subsequently called them “repeatedly” with no answer. The two attorneys had not visited Rhodes in almost two months and missed filing deadlines, hindering Rhodes’s defense, Tarpley wrote.

The Hill has reached out to the two attorneys for comment.

With Tarpley now heading Rhodes’s case, he outlined 14 “necessary” motions that still needed to be filed for his defense. 

Without the delay to allow Tarpley to file the motions and further look into the case, he argued Rhodes’s Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment rights would be violated.

“Stewart Rhodes is the prime defendant (of 9), in the most high profile, significant, complex and complicated case (with massive, potentially global, political implications), amid the entire array of 850-plus Jan. 6 defendants,” Tarpley wrote in the filing. “Yet Rhodes’ case has been fast-tracked onto a faster schedule than any other Jan. 6 case.”

The judge early last month denied a separate request to delay the defendants’ trial, dismissing their concerns that the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 could release a trove of transcripts from its interviews shortly before the trial. 

The judge said the concerns were not sufficient but he would revisit the issue if transcripts were dropped on the “eve of the trial.”

In the new request for a delay, Tarpley said he will move to separate Rhodes’s case from that of the other defendants, noting that most of them were indicted months earlier than the Oath Keepers founder.

“Codefendants have had almost a year more than Rhodes with which to prepare for trial,” Tarpley wrote. “Rhodes is not prepared for trial on September 26; and neither Rhodes’ prior counselors nor the attorneys for codefendants are prepared for trial.”

Tarpley also argued that last week’s arrest of Oath Keepers attorney Kellye SoRelle and other recent indictments mark a “monumental change” in how Rhodes expected to defend himself at trial.

“These additional indictments effectively remove these important, key, defense witnesses from being able to provide material testimony in defense of Rhodes at Rhodes’ trial,” Tarpley argued.