LANNA DURKIN RICHER and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Associated Press
8h ago, Saturday, October 1, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center.
Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group, are poised to argue that jurors cannot find him guilty of seditious conspiracy because all the actions he took before the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, were in preparation for orders he anticipated from the then-president — orders that never came.
Rhodes and four associates are accused of plotting for weeks to stop the transfer of presidential power from the Republican incumbent to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating with Oath Keepers in battle gear storming the Capitol alongside hundreds of other Trump supporters.
Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Monday.
Rhodes intends to take the stand to argue he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act to call up a militia to support him, his lawyers have said. Trump didn’t do that, but Rhodes’ team says that what prosecutors allege was an illegal conspiracy was “actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize” the law.
Approved ~ Primus Pilus
Bugs Marlowe
Article URL : https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/us/trump-at-center-of-oath-keepers-novel-defense-in-jan-6-case/ar-AA12tkEc