this is cnn breaking news. two prominent members of the oath keepers are being sentenced for their actions on the attack on the u.s. capitol on january 6th of 2021. the judge saying the actions of stewart rhodes, the founder and leader of the far right group oath keepers amounted to domestic terrorism, that he is going to be sentenced to 18 years in prison. kelly meggs also being sentenced. we have cnn crime and justice reporter katelyn polantz joining us. this just broke. tell us the very latest. reporter: right, so the judge has just delivered the sentence to stewart rhodes. he will be spending 18 years in federal prison for the crimes he committed up and until january 6th as he gathered oath keepers to washington, d.c. and they went inside the capitol, when he was leading the organization and wanting to essentially foment violence in the united states because of the transfer of power from donald trump to joe biden. the judge is just finishing his speech to rhodes and d
speech by the department of justice and i think that essentially they used stewart rhodes words against him. it was not what his actions were, but it was his words. i mean, we all argued that he never went into the capitol, he never assaulted anyone, he never destroyed any property. we argued all those matters during the trial and post trial, and clearly the words of stewart rhodes is what the judge returned to time and time again, what he had said over a long period of time. and just as mr. linder said, had he been in austin, texas, on january 6th and not in washington, d.c., would he have been indicted and prosecuted? no, because it was his words. and so the fact of the matter is that we think that ultimately this is going to be about free speech, we think that we have a good appeal coming on this. we look forward to the appeal, the appellate process. and, you know, we stand firmly behind stewart rhodes.
for it and charge the former president. one interesting tie between the defendants, the oath keepers and trump s inner circle, is that one of the oath keeper defendants was in a separate group providing security for roger stone on january 6th. so if they re going to continue to flip these individuals, that could lead to trump s inner circle and eventually perhaps to trump himself. but as far as today, this is a good day for democracy. i don t think it immediately has an effect on donald trump, but stay tuned. david aronberg and katelyn polantz, thank you so much. if you re just joining us, we can report the leader of the oath keepers, stewart rhodes, has been sentenced to 18 years for his actions on and leading up to january 6th. the judge in giving the sentence of 18 years, he noted that rhodes has had no remorse and, in the judge s words, he remains
a threat to this country, to its democracy, to its democracy for having attacked american democracy at its most important moment, the transfer of power. he went on to say this is terrorism, qualifying those attacks and the oath keepers role in the attacks, not just in the attack, but the process of attempting to disrupt the certification of joe biden. the judge calling that an act of domestic terrorism. we want to listen to stewart rhodes lawyers speaking outside the courthouse now. to look at a defendant and say i consider you a future danger to the future of the country, and when i heard that, not unlike phillip just stated, i anticipated much higher than an 18-year sentence. not that i agree with the
became a key piece of why this was a seditious conspiracy case. they had been waiting, the oath keepers and rhodes were waiting for president trump at the time to basically call them and invoke the insurrection act to take over the capitol and block the transfer of power. when they failed on january 6th, rhodes continued to send messages to his group essentially saying that maybe they should regroup and continue to figure this out. so that is really part of what this case is, and yesterday, whenever the justice department was beginning to lay out some of their arguments for this sentencing today, they were reading back to back many of the things that stewart rhodes was saying and brought it up again today, how often he talked about fighting, about bloody revolution, about civil war, and then after that the judge acknowledged today that there was no documented message of stewart rhodes ever expressing regret after january 6th in the many, many messages that he sent. we want to get som