‘Fighting fit’: Trial to show Oath Keepers’ road to Jan. 6

The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight.

Convinced the White House had been stolen from Republican Donald Trump, Stewart Rhodes exhorted his followers to action, suggesting they emulate a popular uprising that brought down Yugoslavia’s president two decades earlier. He published a version of his appeal online, headlined, “What We The People Must Do.”

“We must now ... refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol,” Rhodes declared to fellow Oath Keepers.