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Sedition trial witness: Rhodes gave me message urging Trump to take power by force [1]
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Date: 2022-11-02
Alpers testified under oath that he came to the meeting with Rhodes with a recording device hidden on his person. The meeting was launched with the help of Alpers’ friend, Chad Rogers, a co-founder with Alpers of the Allied Special Operations Group. Notably, that group conducted a so-called “audit” of the election results from Antrim County, Michigan in 2020. It was that report that was used to try to convince Trump to have the National Guard seize voting machines.
Meeting at night in the parking lot of a closed Fry’s elecrronic store in Texas, there were just a few people there besides Rhodes and Alpers, Alpers testified. That included a deeply drunk Kellye SoRelle, he added. He couldn’t recall the others. It was also his first-ever meeting with Rhodes.
“The intent behind the meeting was to provide the information to President Trump,” Alpers, a military veteran who was deployed to Iraq, Afganistan and Qatar, testified Wednesday.
Once cell phones were stowed in a nearby vehicle—the recording device was not found—Rhodes prodded Alpers: What did he know about Trump preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act?
“I mean we heard he dropped the Insurrection Act and now we’re hearing he didn’t drop it,” Rhodes is heard saying in the recorded session.
This, Alpers explained, was a question from Rhodes about whether Trump planned to invoke the Insurrection Act so that groups like (and including) the Oath Keepers could be called to his side.
Rhodes had already written two public letters urging Trump to invoke the act. Rhodes claimed the election was stolen and urged Trump to raise up Oath Keepers this so the transfer of power could be stopped . Those letters were published on the Oath Keepers website on Dec. 14, 2020 and Dec. 23, 2020.
When Alpers told Rhodes on Jan. 10, however, that Trump was not prepared to invoke the act, Alpers offered Rhodes a small comfort.
Even if it seemed like Trump wouldn’t invoke it, that didn’t mean their conversation wouldn’t be taken “to the right places” or “specifically to the head guy.”
Rhodes asked him then to take a message to the outgoing president.
Alpers asked Rhodes to write it into a phone so the message would be clear and captured accurately, he testified.
That message was admitted into evidence Wednesday and iis now shown here in its entirety:
“This is Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, Army airborne veteran and Yale Law graduate. President Trump, you can save the Republic by doing your duty as Commander in Chief. Biden is an illegitimate Chicom puppet. He is about to get his hands on the nuclear codes and command all of our armed forces. You must use the Insurrection Act and use the power of the presidency to stop him. And all us veterans will support you and so will the vast majority of the military. If you don’t then Biden/Kamala will turn all that power on you, your family and all of us. You and your family will be imprisoned and killed. Just like the Romanovs in Russia. The czar and his family were promised safety if he stepped down. He did, and they were all murdered. You and your children will die in prison. And us veterans will die in combat on U.S. soil fighting against traitors who YOU turned over all the powers of the presidency to. You must do as Lincoln did. He arrested congressman, state legistlators and issued a warrant for SCOTUS Chief Justice Taney. Take command like Washington would. Be a Churchill, not a Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister who wanted to appease Hitler). Go down in history as the savior of the Republic not a man who surrendered it to deadly traitors and enemies who then enslaved and murdered millions of Americans. We wrote you two long open letters on the Oath Keepers site. Please read them for a solid game plan to save our Republic. Here they are: I am here for you and so are all my men. We will come help you if you need us. Military and police. And so will your millions of supporters. Stewart Rhodes”
Alpers ultimately did not take the message to Trump and he told prosecutors on Wednesday it was because he didn’t agree with Rhodes. The Oath Keeper leader’s views were too “extremist” and “one-sided,” he said.
Sending the message would have “wrapped me into agreeing with that ideology in some way.”
After typing the message out, a clearly tense Rhodes reiterated his priorities.
“If he doesn’t act now to use his presidential power and save our country then its going to fall to the communists and they are going to do to him and his family what happened to the Czar and his family… it might be prison. [They] could be raped and shanked in prison but they’ll still wind up dead. That’s the reality. And not just them. It’s all of us too.”
It was at this point that Alpers said he “kinda stepped back” and questioned whether pushing this message to Trump was the the best idea.
“Everything is built on relationships and credibility and providing this information forward, with it being very one-sided, could have very unintended negative consequences for trust and relationships at work,” Alpers said.
Alpers also had experience with wars, he testified. He knew the cost.
“Asking for a civil war to be on American ground and understanding, as a person who has gone to war, that means blood is going to get shed on the streets where your family is. That’s not a distant land. It’s right here,” he said.
Rhodes, during the meeting on Jan. 10, told Alpers there would be “combat here on U.S. soil no matter what.”
“No matter what you think they’ll do, it’s coming,” Rhodes said.
He believed the Biden administration would “disarm” everyone and then, once that was done, “come after everyone that was at the Capitol.”
“They are going to come after every patriot,” he said.
When Alpers told Rhodes at the meeting that he didn’t condone what happened at the Capitol, Rhodes said it “turned out to be a good thing.”
“Maybe it also showed the people that we got a spirit of resistance so I’m leeting you know my only regret is they should have brought rifles. I tell you what, if Trump’s not going to do the right thing… if he’s just going to let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang fucking Nancy Pelosi from the lampost,” Rhodes said.
During cross examination by David Fischer, attorney for defendant Thomas Caldwell, Fischer asked whether Alpers was wokring for any law enforcement agency when he decided to record the Jan. 10 meeting. Alpers testified that he was not.
The Justice Department is on the cusp of resting its case against Rhodes, Meggs, Caldwell, Harrelson and Watkins.
For up to the minute updates, check out the live blog here at Daily Kos or follow this reporter on Twitter.
This story is developing.
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