Witness: Oath Keepers head tried to reach Trump after Jan. 6 – By Lindsay Whitehurst (AP News) / Nov 2, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes tried to get a message to then-President Donald Trump that urged him to fight to stay in power and “save the republic,” according to trial testimony on Wednesday.
Rhodes said in his message — given to an intermediary — that the Oath Keepers would support the Republican president if he invoked the Insurrection Act and called them up as a militia.
The message never made it to Trump. The intermediary — a Texas software developer and military veteran who testified he had an indirect way to reach the president — was taken aback by it and went to the FBI instead.
“That’s asking for civil war on American ground … that means blood is going to be shed on streets where your family is,” Jason Alpers told jurors. He decided not to pass along Rhodes’ words. “It would have wrapped me into agreeing with that ideology in some way, which I did not.”
