(22 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Washington – 22 January 2025
++STARTS ON A SOUNDBITE++
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers:
"Because a person’s a felon doesn’t make them devoid of their right to protest, right? To petition the government for disagreements as long as being peaceable. Their First Amendment rights are not destroyed after that, I would hope."
Reporter: "I’m more just asking because of like violent backgrounds, things, things that would reflect on the way that they might conduct themselves in that situation."
Rhodes: "Here’s the thing. I’m not — I wasn’t in command of the entire crowd. It’s, it’s like 100,000 people. I was in command of my guys (Oath Keepers) and my guys screwed up. If I’d have been with them, I’d have said don’t go inside the Capitol. But I don’t believe they committed any crimes, at most trespass."
++WHITE FLASH++
2. Unnamed Capitol Hill staff member speaks with Rhodes, UPSOUND (English)
"You shouldn’t be here. You are welcome, First Amendment, free speech. But it is disrespectful to be here. I have no standing here. I work here. I just want to express that, please tell your story elsewhere. Here is disrespectful."
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers:
"So you have a right to express your opinion and I have a right to carry on… I used to work here too. I have right to free speech and I’m here on official business too. I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter."
++ENDS ON A SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
An extremist group leader who orchestrated an assault on the U.S. Capitol four years ago defended his role in the attack as he returned to the scene of the crime on Wednesday, while judges who sentenced hundreds of rioters criticized the presidential pardons that have freed scores of them from prison.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes visited Capitol Hill after he was released from prison as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping clemency order for the nearly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy in one of the serious cases brought by the Justice Department in the siege that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and left more than 100 police officers injured. Rhodes was found guilty of orchestrating a weekslong plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Trump in power.
Rhodes did not enter the building on Jan. 6 and said the members of the Oath Keepers who did ”screwed up."
"If I’d have been with them, I’d have said don’t go inside the Capitol. But I don’t believe they committed any crimes at most trespass," Rhodes told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Rhodes’ visit comes on the same day that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson revived a special committee to investigate the riot, an effort to defend Trump’s actions that day and dispute the work of a bipartisan committee that investigated the siege two years ago. Johnson said Wednesday that he would not second guess Trump’s decision to pardon the rioters and that “we believe in redemption, we believe in second chances.”
Rhodes, who arrived at on Capitol Hill wearing a Trump 2020 hat, said he was at the Capitol to advocate for the release of another defendant. Rhodes was among 14 Jan. 6 defendants whose sentences were commuted. He told reporters he would be pushing Trump to grant him a full pardon.
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