By Adele M. Stan | April 19, 2021 5:53 pm
Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, speaks to the crowd during a pro-2nd amendment rally in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on January 19, 2013. Photo: Gregory Johnston via Shutterstock
Before investigators and journalists even began to reconstruct the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the presence of Oath Keepers loomed large. A belligerent organization comprising active and retired law enforcement officers and members of the military, Oath Keepers members pledge to not enforce any order that they themselves deem to be unconstitutional. At one of the rallies that formed the drumbeat in the ramp-up to the Capitol insurrection, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes demanded that Donald Trump declare martial law and deputize Julian Assange to do an infodump and that if the then-president failed to do so, Oath Keepers would have to take matters into their own hands in what he promised would be “a much more bloody war.”