Oaf Keeper Stewart Rhodes Just Wondering If Liz Cheney Will Lend Him Her Microphone For A Couple Hours

Normal people facing a federal indictment do not go on television. They do not go on podcasts. The do not speak on the record to reporters. And they sure as hell don’t offer to waive their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and talk about their cases on camera. Normal people SHUT THE HELL UP, particularly when they are represented by counsel.

But the January 6 Capitol Riot defendants are not normal people, and neither are their lawyers. So of course Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers head Oaf, is offering, via his lawyer, to shoot his mouth off on national television and under oath while facing a multi-count indictment for seditious conspiracy.

The New York Times‘s Alan Feuer was first to break the news, which was rapidly confirmed by every major media outlet covering the January 6 prosecutions. According to CBS’s Scott McFarlane, Rhodes “specifically wants to respond to what Rep Liz Cheney (R-WY) has been saying about the Oath Keepers at prior Jan 6 Committee hearings” and his lawyer says he “will insist it be carried on network TV … and not just C-SPAN.” As if Liz Cheney can order Fox and NBC to air a congressional hearing.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this whole thing is fucking crazy. When Rhodes was summoned to testify before the committee before, Politico reports that he largely invoked his right to remain silent. Which makes sense, since he’s charged with a plot to violently impede congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win after Rhodes and his buddies marched into the Capitol in stack formation, wearing uniforms and body armor, as their pals holed up in a hotel room in Arlington with an arsenal of weapons waiting for the call to deploy. This dipshit is offering to inculpate not just himself but also his idiot co-defendants, too, because he thinks he’s so smart that he’ll be able to commandeer the microphone and gain a podium to broadcast his message to the American people directly. And not for nothing, but he just lost a motion to move this trial to Virginia because of publicity in DC caused by the January 6 hearings.

This whole idea is so ridiculous that it could have come out of Sidney Powell’s broke Kraken-brain. Remember when she said that she was super psyched to be sued for defamation, because then she’d be able to get discovery on Dominion and prove that they rigged the election with dead Hugo Chavez and China by dint of Italian space lasers, or whatever?

Great minds think alike! And by “great” we mean “diseased.”

But perhaps this isn’t entirely a coincidence, since BuzzFeed and Mother Jones have reported that Powell’s embattled charity Defending the Republic is paying legal fees for multiple January 6 defendants, including Rhodes and his buddies Kelly Meggs, Connie Meggs, and Kenneth Harrelson. Last week prosecutors filed a motion seeking to determine whether the defendants had given informed consent to whatever strings may be attached to Powell’s largesse. Because the last thing the DOJ wants is to get a conviction, only to have these thugs try to get the verdict overturned by claiming ineffective assistance of counsel.

So, let’s just say that it’s, ummm, interesting that Rhodes’s lawyers, who are allegedly being paid by someone with her own agenda, are going along with this, ummm, unorthodox plan for their client to potentially incriminate himself and his co-defendants in public.

Really, really … INTERESTING.

[Politico]

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