appearing in court to face the most serious charges yet in the insurrection investigation. ed lavandera joins us. what happened? reporter: stewart rhodes saying he s not guilty. federal prosecutors laying out a 48-page indictment where they accuse him of forcefully plotting to stop the peaceful transition of presidential power. he faces five different charges, including seditious criminal conspiracy. saying he text messaged and organized a plot to bring weaponry into the d.c. area. sa saying we will have to do a massively bloody revolution against them. that s what is going to have to happen. also going on to say, we aren t going through this without a civil war. prepare your body, mind, and spirit. prosecutors say rhodes and his count counterparts had weapons stashed in a hotel room in northern virginia. but his attorneys say this is being overblown. they were quite fixated that trump would activate them. but they left that in virginia. if they were going to do this, the
bench. we ll talk about that just ahead. i want to get straight to cnn s senior legal affairs correspondent, paul reach, with the latest on the charges against the leader of the oath keepers and ten other people. the justice department today escalating its efforts to prosecute those responsible for january 6th, charging oath keepers leader stewart rhodes, along with ten others, with seditious conspiracy leading to the attack on the capitol. it s the first time prosecutors have used the sedition charge after bringing ever 700 cases related to the insurrection. prosecutors have long signaled they considered using the rarely applied section of federal law. rhodes is the most high-profile individual charged in the investigation so far. court documents filed today lay out a wide-ranging plot to storm the capitol and disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. two days after election day, rhodes allegedly urged his followers to refuse to accept the election results, writing
you re believing is bs. for some reason i had an image walking with caw boy boots talking about i m the law in these parts. that was my immediate image. you know what? think about it. the problem is it was never about what common sense and logical. that s the frustrating part. it was never about that. because you know it was going to be spun. now suddenly it s going to be a criticism of this doj being political, and that wasn t the case before for the prior doj and attorney general. it s sometimes i think the point is to frustrate, and so the arguments come out, don, they re like, well here s the explanation for why this is. i might think, you know, the point is to frustrate because logic has shown its face since january 7th. yes. but today with the charges from these are the proud boys or the oath keepers, right? the oath keepers. these are the oath keepers. i don t think there are oath keepers blm and antifa and so on and so forth. they actually criticized them as
6th. plus, yet another blow to the biden administration, the supreme court blocking a nationwide vaccine and testing mandate for large businesses. but the vaccine mandate for certain healthcare workers will take effect. also this morning, breaking news we re following this hour, tennis star novak djokovic has his visa revoked and faces deportation once again over his covid-19 vaccination status. this just days before the start of the australian open. so could a last minute appeal put him back into the tournament? here now from australia, cnn s paula hancocks, as well as cnn tennis contributor rym abalil. he had an skexemption from the tennis federation and they re revoking his visa for the second time. what is the rational they gave? reporter: well, jim, and bianna, what we heard from the immigration minister alex hall, he didn t give too many details but he said he was revoke the visa on health and good order grounds and it was in the public interest to do so. now, w
let s bring in meteorologist jennifer gray who is tracking the storm for us. where will it hit and when? it s already beginning. look at winter storm warnings, advisories watches, already in place from the upper midwest all the way down to the deep south. it s snowing in places like iowa, and they can see more than a foot of snow in some places and the storm system is going to basically just dive straight down to the south. a lot of areas will start with rain, end up with a little bit of a wintry mix, and then end up with snow. it s very tricky once we get to the deep south how much snow or freezing rain or ice we re going to get across some of these regions, especially places like atlanta. could be sort of a game time call, depending on what we re going to get and when. we also are looking at a crippling ice event setting up most likely around the carolinas, some areas could get up to an inch of ice. and we re talking about travel will be impossible. trees will be down.