A phone call allegedly placed by Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III to President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, never happened, one of Rhodes’ former attorneys said.
“I confirmed from multiple sources that the phone call did not happen,” said attorney Jonathon Moseley.
He previously represented Rhodes in a civil suit and in Rhodes’ appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 select committee. “The report is yet another fantasy about protests on Jan. 6, 2021.”
Moseley said he spoke with Rhodes, held at the Alexandria City Jail in Virginia pending trial on five criminal counts related to Jan. 6 unrest at the U.S. Capitol.
Rhodes is one of 16 Oath Keepers charged with an alleged plot to scuttle the certification of Electoral College votes by a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
“Stewart Rhodes directly told me when asked specifically about this report that he completely denied the claim that he had tried to call Trump through an intermediary, directly or indirectly,” Moseley told The Epoch Times.
The allegation that Rhodes tried to reach President Trump was contained in a plea agreement signed by Oath Keepers member William Todd Wilson, 44, of Newton Grove, North Carolina. Wilson pleaded guilty on May 4 to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official government proceeding—both felonies carrying sentences up to 20 years in prison.
Wilson told prosecutors he was in a room at the Phoenix Park Hotel in Washington D.C. in the late afternoon of Jan.6.
He claims Rhodes made a call to an unnamed person to “repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” according to his plea agreement statement of offense (pdf).
The individual refused to forward Rhodes to President Trump, court documents said. Rhodes told the group in the hotel suite, “I just want to fight,” prosecutors allege.
Moseley said the claim might have come from Wilson confusing Rhodes’ previous public comments.
“First, the allegation itself proves that the Oath Keepers had no ability to communicate with Trump,” Moseley said in a statement.
“Rhodes, in December 2020, posted an ‘open letter’ publicly on the Oath Keepers’ website encouraging Trump to invoke the [Anti] Insurrection Act of 1807. This is 100-percent legal. But Rhodes had no way to send it directly to Trump.”
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