Thursday, April 18, 2024
Oath Keepers founder and January 6 conspirator Elmer Stewart Rhodes, convicted Thursday of the rare charge of seditious conspiracy for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, had previously lived in Montana and Nevada, but his 32-page indictment listed a different address for him: Granbury, Texas.
The lakeside tourist community in Hood County, voted Best Historic Small Town in America three years in a row by USA Today, is known for its history and charm, but is also known for its hardline conservative politics that at times have made national news.
With Rhodes, Granbury has made national news again.
The former Army paratrooper and disbarred Yale Law School graduate was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in federal prison. He was convicted last November after a trial that lasted two months.
Rhodes’ sentence is the longest handed down thus far among more than 500 people convicted in cases brought by the Justice Department against participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The case was followed by major media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, and news of Rhodes’ sentencing was immediately broken on social media.
Rhodes may have lived in Granbury only a short time.
The FBI describes Oath Keepers, an organization consisting largely of current and former military as well as police officers and first responders, as an anti-government militia movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Oath Keepers as an organization that engages in vigilante justice and is “based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy American liberties.
