Subpoenas have been drafted for six Oath Keepers convicted of Jan. 6 crimes, looking for texts, emails, or other records that could show they were coerced by prosecutors to lie in their plea deals, a new court filing said.
Defense attorneys in the Oath Keepers seditious-conspiracy trial underway in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. asked Judge Amit Mehta to sign the subpoenas addressed to Joshua James, Jason Dolan, William Todd Wilson, Caleb Berry, Brian Ulrich, and Mark Grods.
As drafted, the subpoenas seek: “All non-privileged records, to exclude correspondence with your attorneys, your spouse, any medical provider, and any religious and/or spiritual advisors, concerning your guilty plea.”
Attorneys are looking for evidence that these Oath Keepers agreed to the guilty pleas only under coercion by prosecutors, believing that they are actually innocent of the charges that will put them in prison.
“Stewart Rhodes knows these Oath Keepers,” wrote Edward Tarpley, an attorney for Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III. The convicted men “knew the Oath Keepers engaged in no conspiracy, had no plan to commit any crime, and intended to act lawfully at all times.
“And Rhodes knows from knowing them that they must have told friends and family that they were in fact innocent but they had to plead guilty due to the crushing financial burden and other pressures such as incarceration and concern for the needs of their families.”
On Sept. 30, Judge Mehta denied the motion for issuance of the subpoenas.
Tarpley said a big clue to the alleged coercion is the “flip-flops” evident in the plea deals, and the boilerplate language used in the statements of guilt made at the time of the pleas.
“Even after pleading guilty, the witnesses clearly establish their own innocence and the innocence of all of the defendants here, then include scripted statements not in their own ‘voice’ saying the opposite. The after-plea statements are internally inconsistent and self-contradictory.”
Changing Stories?
The subpoenas are for communications that occurred up to four months before each man pleaded guilty and one month after the plea deal.
As you have probably seen, we have made the difficult decision as a family to accept a plea agreement ... We made the choice that makes it more likely that Josh would be home sooner than later instead of risking our future on a trial that would likely take away many years of his life and deprive him of the chance to raise his children. After a year of being in the thick of it and many lengthy talks with our attorneys, this plea best protects our hopes that we will remain a family.“Mrs. James’s comments suggest that Mr. James’s acceptance of his plea agreement was motivated by reasons other than his desire to accept responsibility for the crimes with which he was charged,” Woodward wrote.
“To the extent he has engaged in non-privileged communications (e.g. communications with anyone other than his counsel, his wife, or a religious and/or spiritual advisor), those communications would be material to the defense and serve as a basis to impeach Mr. James should he testify in this matter.”
“That was the only deal [prosecutors] would accept because that’s what they want … to create a false crime and to create a false witness,” Rhodes said. “And that’s why they finally indicted me because they got someone to agree to ’testi-lie.' That’s the only reason I was indicted. For an entire year, they had nothing on me. So [they had to] go find something and make something.”
The DOJ as a policy does not comment on criminal cases outside of court filings.
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