Exclusive from Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes: No Man Left Behind – Why President Trump Should Pardon ALL J6 Defendants, Including the So-Called “Violent” Ones
Editor’s note: Stewart Rhodes was sent to prison for 18 years after the Biden DOJ invented charges against him and his patriotic men’s group following the events on January 6, 2021. Stewart never went inside the US Capitol. He never participated in any violence. And, Stewart told his men to leave their weapons outside of the District of Columbia that day. For this Merrick Garland, Joe Biden, and the corrupt DC courts sent Stewart to prison for 18 years.
By Stewart Rhodes, Founder of Oath Keepers and persecuted J6 Political Prisoner
I’m a non-violent J-6 political prisoner, serving an unjust 18 year sentence after I refused to plead guilty to crimes I didn’t commit (Seditious Conspiracy being the worst of several absurd false-charges), and because I refused to bear false witness against President Trump, and insisted on going to trial along with my brave co-defendants.
On Jan 6, 2021, I didn’t even enter the Capitol, didn’t tell anyone else to (as the government’s own witnesses testified), and committed no violence. I simply stood outside and exercised my right to political free speech, but that didn’t save me from being railroaded through a DC show trial along with other innocent Oath Keepers.
Nor did my clean record at age 56, with zero prior arrests or criminal charges (just speeding tickets!), save me from being denied pre-trial release and held in solitary confinement for over a year (before, during, and after trial) including a stint in the “hole” in the notorious DC Jail. And I’m by no means alone in that.
Systemic denial of pre-trial release and extended solitary confinement was also inflicted on most of my co-defendants and many other J-6 political prisoners (most also had zero criminal history) to attempt to break their spirits and coerce them into false-confession “plea bargains” and, worse, to try to coerce them into agreeing to “testi-lie” (commit coached perjury) against other innocent people. Our own State Department condemns solitary confinement as a form of torture when other nations do it to our citizens abroad. It’s also a form of psychological warfare, used to break POWs. It didn’t work on me or my co-defendants but it did work on many others (imagine a veteran with PTSD, who’s claustrophobic, in solitary). And once word got out that we were being held in solitary, that caused others to cave and make “deals” shortly after arrest, out of fear of suffering the same fate.
I tell you this so you understand I’ve been there, done that. I saw this corrupt system of coercion, via soul-crushing punishment prior to trial, from the inside.
Which is why, although I’m one of the non-violent J-6 political prisoners, I feel compelled by honor and justice to speak out, adding my voice to the growing chorus of MAGA patriots supporting President Trump in pardoning ALL J-6ers, no matter what they were accused of, plead to, or were convicted of in a DC show trial, including those now labeled “violent” and “guilty of assaulting police.”
“A VERY NASTY SYSTEM”
The bedrock American principle of “innocent until proven guilty” became a sick joke for Trump supporters during the Biden regime. Turns out Nancy Pelosi had it right: In the Biden (in)justice system, you’re presumed guilty (and a terrorist!), tossed immediately into the “hole” in some dark, sunless corner of a detention facility and then given the “opportunity to prove [your] innocence” to a leftist jury drawn from the alleged “victim pool” of DC residents, in front of a DC judge who also considers himself/herself to be a J-6 “victim” (and that same judge won’t grant you venue change). Good luck! That, along with being threatened with decades in prison, is why so many gave up and took a plea “deal.”
As President Trump said in his recent Meet the Press interview, they plead guilty to assaulting police “[b]ecause they had no choice.” He added:
“I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system. They say to a guy, ‘you’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”
Exactly right. Pleading “guilty” out of desperation doesn’t mean actual guilt. In fact, in the Deep State/Biden “Empire of Lies” truth really is treason (hat tip to Ron Paul), and, therefore, lies are loyalty. You’ve seen it yourself for four years. Since the loyal minions of the regime lie constantly, your best policy is to invert whatever nonsense they’re spewing to begin to arrive at the truth. Well, that applies to the Department of [In]Justice/FBLie, their coached-perjury-committing witnesses, and DC judges too. Why wouldn’t it? It’s the same corrupt machine that indicted President Trump for multiple pretend offenses.
After my trial, I spent several months in pre-sentencing detention in Lewisburg, PA and in the DC Gulag CTF where I got to know many amazing MAGA patriots “convicted” of assaulting police on J-6 (by the way, their voices can be heard in the recording of J-6ers singing the National Anthem that President Trump played at his campaign rallies).
Most of the men I met were, as President Trump said, coerced into accepting a guilty plea “bargain” to avoid decades in prison. Others had a Soviet-style show trial in DC, where, of course, they were found “guilty” after being denied the right to even argue self-defense or defense of others (imagine if Daniel Penny had been precluded from making that argument in his trial). They weren’t allowed to show the jury video of police using excessive force just seconds before their own actions. The prosecution cut that out of the video, and the defense couldn’t even discuss it.
Very similar, by the way, to my trial, where we weren’t allowed to show the jury the infamous video of Ray Epps, on the night of Jan 5, telling a crowd “tomorrow, we need to go INTO the Capitol!” (actually doing what we were falsely accused of doing – planning to enter the Capitol on J-6 and urging others to join in). Nor were we allowed to show video of Epps whispering in Ryan Samsel’s ear seconds before Samsel pushed over the first Capitol police barrier on J-6. The judge wouldn’t even let us mention Ray Epps’ name to the jury. Like I said, been there, done that.
We all had our rights grievously violated in one form or another by a hyper-politicized, corrupt, weaponized DOJ/FBI/DHS, and DC judiciary because we loved our country enough to travel to DC, on Jan. 6, 2021, to protest the criminal and unconstitutional theft of an election. That’s our REAL crime.
ALL need a Presidential Pardon and expungement of their record to make them whole by restoring their full rights of citizenship – the right to vote, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to NOT be falsely labeled a “felon” for the rest of their lives. And, if they’re a veteran like me, they need a pardon to restore their veteran’s benefits, including the right to be interned in a veterans cemetery. Yes, we’ve been stripped of that right too. I have a letter from the VA to prove it.
Leave no man left behind (as a felon).
THE WHOLE POINT: STOP TRUMP! AT ANY COST!
The entry of the Capitol on January 6th was a manipulated/orchestrated “wag the dog” “Reichstag Fire” style event meant to prevent meaningful Congressional challenge and debate on Jan 6 to the illegitimate electoral college slates from states that had plainly not followed state election laws.
It was also meant to divert attention from the actual ongoing insurrection/coup by the Deep State and Democratic elite that disenfranchised millions of Americans by stealing the election of 2020 through those unprecedented violations of state election laws, done in the name of Covid, to facilitate mass-ballot-box stuffing. Calling it pandemic “emergency” mass mail-in balloting (while violating statutory signature and date requirements), (unsecured) “drop box” voting, and “vote harvesting” didn’t change the fact that it was still just good ol’ fashioned party machine ballot-box stuffing, but now on a grand, national scale. And all done according to a well-coordinated, very well funded plan, as the plotters later openly admitted and bragged about in Time Magazine’s article “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election” by Molly Ball.
Violating state election laws meant to prevent cheating obviously makes it easier to cheat, and to cover it up. And that made it unconstitutional, since Article II mandates that only the state legislatures can determine the manner of selecting electors – not a bunch of partisan Democrat election officials or judges.
As Trump lawyer John Eastman argued, Congress (including VP Pence as the President of the Senate) should have rejected those slates from states where election laws were violated, sending them back to the state legislatures to do their damn job, by selecting the electors themselves, as they had both the power and duty to do under Article II. To his credit, President Trump, to this day, refuses to back down on that – because it’s still the truth.
And that’s why “they” made sure the Capitol had light security on J-6, refusing President Trump’s offer of 10,000 National Guard troops, and refusing to use the readily available, tall, black, heavy steel climb-resistant fencing that went up AFTER Jan 6. They wanted protesters to enter, so they made it easy, and then their provocateurs in the crowd made sure it happened, because entry (along with the mysterious, still-unsolved “pipe bombs” planted outside DNC HQ) allowed them to call an emergency recess and shut down challenges to the illegal/unconstitutional slates, and then rubber stamp them later that night.
Finally, entry into the Capitol facilitated their “insurrection” false-narrative (who ever heard of an unarmed insurrection?) and relentless “lawfare” against both President Trump and his J-6 supporters, all meant to prevent President Trump from ever regaining the White House by declaring him ineligible to serve under the 14th Amendment, putting him in prison, and/or convincing the public that he’s now unelectable (and to demonize, suppress, and eventually destroy the MAGA movement).
But none of that worked. In the long run, it only made President Trump and his movement stronger, more resolute, more respected, and more popular than ever, with the naked “lawfare” opening millions of eyes.
Then “they” tried to kill him. But, by the grace of God, that didn’t work either, and millions of people witnessed President Trump’s manly reaction to being shot in the ear (the reaction of a legit warrior), which made him unbeatable. God truly has taken what men meant for evil, and used it for good. Hallelujah!
Jan 6 was a manipulated event – a form of entrapment. As fellow J-6er John Strand put it, “Every case was prosecuted by the same government that facilitated and instigated the J6 event …. Nobody should be prosecuted by a government that facilitated and instigated a criminal event. J6 was obvious entrapment, with clear evidence of government fraud, dereliction, and police abuse.”
Spot on! Like my co-defendant Watkins described it during our trial, it was like a “lobster trap” – easy to get into, but once inside, you’re screwed.
Yes, the protest was real, and the justified anger and alarm over the stolen election was real, but “they” amplified and manipulated that anger by having agent-provocateurs, both in the crowd, and, sadly, among the police, agitate the crowd from both ends. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and murdered unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was just one example. He’s an open BLM supporter and leftist partisan. I believe other officers like him were tasked with using unlawful excessive force that day to agitate and provoke the crowd.
How else do you get a bunch of Trump supporters, who are normally very pro-police, to fight the police? You have select officers/teams of officers use excessive force against women, children, and elderly. According to witnesses, it was police shoving an elderly lady down a flight of concrete steps, repeatedly, that really set the crowd off, along with pepper balls and flash-bangs being used, unprovoked, on groups with women and children in them.
Police also fired rubber bullets and CS canisters directly into people’s faces at close range (which is deadly force), and shoved one protester off a railing 30 feet high, so he fell on concrete. When I saw that video, I thought he must have died, but miraculously, he survived. NO police died that day but four Trump supporters did (two were women). In addition to the murder of Ashli Babbitt, another unarmed woman, Roseanne Boyland, was beaten by police (struck repeatedly in the head with a billy club, while unconscious) and died. That too was deadly force. Police are trained to only strike below the shoulders, and to NOT strike the head with a club, unless the person is a deadly force threat (and an unconscious, unarmed woman is hardly any kind of threat). Men who attempted to protect Roseanne and save her life were later charged with “assaulting police officers” (and, of course, forbidden to show her beating).
CONTINUED
Stewart Rhodes is currently in prison in Maryland.
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