Who Is Stewart Rhodes?

Mike Sylwester linked an article and a video in a comment. The links pertain to the January 6 Event and, more specifically, to Person One, aka, Stewart Rhodes. The article appears at Revolver:

Federal Protection of “Oath Keepers” Kingpin Stewart Rhodes Breaks The Entire Capitol “Insurrection” Lie Wide Open

Previously Revolver got itself into some trouble by getting involved in some technical legal conclusions, which they were unprepared to support. This time around it looks like they're being more cautious. Instead of conclusions, they're raising questions--and there are plenty of questions about Stewart Rhodes that need answering.

I won't attempt to offer a summary of everything that's now known about Rhodes. Instead I'll offer some conclusions of my own.

I think it's fair to say that Rhodes was not only the "Kingpin" of the Oath Keepers but he's also the Kingpin of the Zhou regime's entire "insurrection" narrative--Mr. Big. The article links to a government motion that, beginning at page 10, cites the words of Rhodes/Person One extensively. The article also quotes Rhodes' public statements from well before January 6 in which Rhodes appears to be clearly engaging in repeated inflammatory rhetoric that includes suggesting violent confrontations that could lead to an "insurrection":

We will now chronicle Stewart Rhodes’s path from Election Day to so-called “Insurrection Day,” as alleged by the Justice Department.

The first cited event comes from a November 9th video conference on the platform GoToMeeting. According to the Oath Keepers indictment, Rhodes (Person One) said the following to his Oath Keeper followers in the meeting:

We’re going to defend the president, the duly elected president, and we call on him to do what needs to be done to save our country. Because if you don’t guys, you’re going to be in a bloody, bloody civil war, and a bloody – you can call it an insurrection or you can call it a war or fight.

The DOJ alleges that Rhodes (Person One) “called upon his followers to go to Washington D.C,” in order to let the President know “the people are behind him” and to prepare for, among other things, fights against Antifa:

PERSON  ONE  told  his  followers  they  needed  to  be  prepared to fight Antifa, which he characterized as a group of individuals with whom “if the fight comes, let the fight come.  Let Antifa – if they go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic back on them.  I’m willing to sacrifice myself for that.  Let the fight start there.  That will give President Trump what he needs, frankly.  If things go kinetic, good.  If they throw bombs at us and shoot us, great, because that brings the  president  his  reason  and  rationale  for  dropping  the Insurrection  Act.

Talk of the “Insurrection Act” is commonplace in Rhodes’ communications with his Oath Keepers followers. What he seemed to convey is that the Oath Keepers should be primed for an insurrection and to stand-by armed, just in case Trump offered some (undefined) signal. This of course is an effective technique (common to agents provocateurs and other informants) to keep followers psychologically primed for violent action without making any explicit and direct command to do so. From the DOJ:

PERSON ONE continued, “I do want some Oath Keepers to stay on the outside, and to stay fully armed and prepared to go in armed, if they have to . . . .  So our posture’s gonna be that we’re posted outside of DC, um, awaiting the President’s orders.  . . . We hope he will give us the orders.  We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia.”

One week after Election Day, in a November 10 public post on OathKeepers.org, Rhodes told his followers to ignore “D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws” should they perceive a signal that President Trump has called them up as a militia:

Our men will be standing by, awaiting the President’s orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.’s ridiculous anti-gun laws (by federal statute, all Americans from age 17-45 are subject to being called up as the militia by the President, and all military veterans are subject to being called up until age 65 because of our training and experience).  – Stay tuned for further details.

Rhodes further primed his followers for the possibility of major conflict, assuring them that “skilled special warfare veterans” will be “standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF” to step in with heavy weaponry, if necessary:

Oath Keepers will also have some of our most skilled special warfare veterans standing by armed, just outside D.C., as an emergency QRF in the event of a worst case scenario in D.C…

Reading this, one sees how Stewart Rhodes’ actions and behavior feed into the very worst narratives about 1/6 — narratives used to smear all patriots who participated in the event, and even all Trump supporters more broadly.

My point in this regard is a very simple one, and it's the one that Revolver raises. In the circumstances of the continuing prosecutions of so many simple people who were even remotely connected to the January 6 Event, it's just about impossible to believe that Rhodes was not acting all along under the control of the FBI, as an operational informant. What I mean is simply this: Given what the government knows about Rhodes' words and actions over a period of two months, and comparing that to what the government knows about the words and actions of people they're actually prosecuting, it's extremely difficult to believe that Rhodes' usefulness as Person One is limited to being a cooperating witness. By comparison with the others, the government appears to totally have the goods on Rhodes. How, then, can it be that he's not in custody and charged for his Kingpin role?

Here's how Revolver frames that issue:

The Justice Department argues that Stewart Rhodes both substantially organized and activated an imputed plan to use violence, on 1/6, in real-time, through a series of encrypted Signal messages beginning at 1:38 p.m., as Trump concluded his rally speech on the National Mall, and 62 minutes before Oath Keepers lieutenants allegedly formed a “military stack” to rush the Capitol doors.

These facts alone, as alleged, are more than legally sufficient to secure an indictment of Stewart Rhodes. We will walk you through the mountains of direct and circumstantial evidence built on top of these allegations, but readers must understand this: the only reason Stewart Rhodes is not in jail *right now* is because of a deliberate decision by the Justice Department to protect him.

Indeed, it is unclear whether the FBI has even sought to search Stewart Rhodes’s residence, personal belongings, or electronic devices, other than a single iPhone allegedly seized on the streets from agents in unmarked FBI vehicles in late April (since returned). For reasons discussed below, there is good reason to suspect the FBI will pursue a tightly controlled and very limited scope of investigation into Stewart Rhodes,. Beyond that narrow scope, they may not want the information they are likely to find.

It's pretty hard to argue against that reasoning. Based on what we know, Rhodes should be the main target of the prosecutions, not a cooperating witness.

And so Revolver asks these questions:

In other words, 1/6 was not the result of an intelligence failure as FBI Director Christopher Wray, the US Senate, and the media tells us. Rather, 1/6 was the result of an intelligence set-up.

The following questions should be shouted from every megaphone, every street corner, and every Congressional lectern until the American people get full and complete answers:

• Does the FBI now, or has it ever, maintained a formal or informal relationship or point of contact with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
• Do any other Federal counterintelligence equities, whether in military, intelligence or law enforcement, including but not limited to Army Counterintelligence, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), or otherwise, maintain or have they ever maintained a formal or informal relationship with Stewart Rhodes, whether directly or indirectly, including through intermediaries?
• If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, how do the FBI and other responsible agencies reconcile the enormous gravity of this omission from their previous deflections, non-answers, and boilerplate that they had “no actionable intelligence” before 1/6?
• If such a confidential relationship did exist between Stewart Rhodes and one or more U.S. counterintelligence equities, does this explain the FBI and Justice Department’s failure to pursue criminal actions against Stewart Rhodes in similarly high-profile “right-wing conspiracy plots” in which Rhodes appears to have played a similarly driving role?
• More specifically, did the FBI or any other U.S. counterintelligence equities maintain a discrete or confidential relationship with Stewart Rhodes during the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff? Was this fact dispositive in the Justice Department’s decision to charge 19 defendants — including certain of Stewart Rhodes’s alleged Oath Keepers underlings — for conspiracy to obstruct a legal proceeding, and to spare Rhodes of similar charges?
• Has the FBI even procured a search warrant for Stewart Rhodes’s personal residence and home electronics? If so, on what dates and what specific categories of evidence were sought?
• If Stewart Rhodes is subsequently arrested after the date of this report (given the pressure these revelations are likely to generate), how does the Justice Department explain its failure to indict Stewart Rhodes on conspiracy charges for nearly six months, when its declared purpose for seeking bail denial for simple trespassers was the DOJ’s stated need to prevent “the immediate danger to the community” defendants allegedly posed? Given that multiple Oath Keepers were charged before the January 20th inauguration citing the need to stop their “immediate danger,” why did the DOJ not file immediate charges against Rhodes, and then make a superseding indictment later in time, as is their routine practice in 1/6 cases?