WASHINGTON — The founder of the Oath Keepers indicated in the months before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service, a former member of the far-right organization testified during a seditious conspiracy trial on Thursday.
Former Oath Keepers member John Zimmerman testified that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes told him he had a contact in the Secret Service, and Zimmerman said he heard Rhodes talking with someone he believed to be a member of the Secret Service in Sept. 2020, a bit over three months before the Jan. 6 attack. The reported call came ahead of a Trump rally in North Carolina, where Zimmerman was an Oath Keepers county leader before leaving the organization.
Rhodes got on the phone with the unknown individual to ask about “parameters” that the Oath Keepers could operate under during the rally, Zimmerman said. He said that Oath Keepers attended the rally to escort attendees from the rally location to their vehicles.
“From the questions Stewart — Mr. Rhodes — was asking, it sounded like it could’ve been” a Secret Service agent, Zimmerman said. NBC News has reached out to the Secret Service for comment.
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Another member of the Oath Keepers, one of three who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, has told the court that Rhodes tried to get in touch with Trump through an intermediary on the night of Jan. 6 after the Capitol attack. It is unclear who was on the other end of that Jan. 6 phone call. Another member of the Oath Keepers, Kellye SoRelle, was in touch with former White House aide Andrew Giuliani in November 2020, as NBC News has reported.
Zimmerman recalled going to an Oath Keepers meeting when they were trying to get a state chapter relaunched and being frustrated with a lack of organization. He ended up leading a county chapter of the Oath Keepers, and traveling to the D.C. area with members of the organization for the Million MAGA March in November, following Trump’s election loss.
Zimmerman testified Thursday in the trial of Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy: Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell. The trial — the Justice Department’s biggest challenge to date — is set to last five or six weeks.
Rhodes frequently cited the Insurrection Act, according to evidence presented by prosecutors, and said in a call recorded in November 2020 that a “quick reaction force” with weapons set up outside of D.C. for the November rally would only go into D.C. if Trump invoked the act to call militias to his aid, under an 1807 law that is supposed to help a president suppress a civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. Zimmerman said that he didn’t think that Rhodes was necessarily in touch with Trump, but he did think Rhodes had a Secret Service connection and that is how the Oath Keepers might find out that Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.
Prosecutors have said that Rhodes’ references to the Insurrection Act in connection with Jan. 6 were nothing more than “cover” for the Oath Keepers plot. Another former Oath Keeper, Michael Adams, testified on Thursday afternoon that he decided to leave the Oath Keepers in December 2020 after the group published open letters to Trump calling upon the former president to invoke the Insurrection Act. One of those letters said Oath Keepers would have “mission-critical gear stowed nearby just outside D.C., and we will answer the call right then and there, if you call on us.”
Zimmerman testified at the trial that he and other members of the Oath Keepers from North Carolina had a falling out with the national chapter as a result of the November trip.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
