A man who served as No. 2 to Stewart Rhodes, the group’s leader, is said to have secretly reported to the F.B.I. in the months leading up to the Jan. 6 attack.
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Trump supporters clashing with police during the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, which led to sedition charges for five members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia.
WASHINGTON — An F.B.I. informant who was embedded for months in the inner circle of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, is likely to testify as a defense witness at the seditious conspiracy trial of Mr. Rhodes in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The informant, Greg McWhirter, served as the Oath Keepers’ vice president but was secretly reporting to the F.B.I. about the group’s activities in the weeks and months leading up to the Capitol attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Despite their relationship with Mr. McWhirter, federal prosecutors decided not to call him as a government witness at the trial of Mr. Rhodes and his four co-defendants, which is now unfolding in Federal District Court in Washington. The prosecution rested its case last week without calling other key cooperating witnesses, including three members of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy charges.
Mr. McWhirter, 40 and a former sheriff’s deputy in Montana, was expected to appear at the trial on Tuesday as a witness for Mr. Rhodes — an unusual move that suggests Mr. Rhodes’s lawyers believe he has information that could help their case.
But during an impromptu hearing on Tuesday morning, the lawyers said that Mr. McWhirter had been taken off a plane while traveling to Washington to testify after suffering a heart attack.
Because of his medical condition, the lawyers said, Mr. McWhirter was unable to appear on the witness stand on Tuesday. While the defense lawyers still want him to testify, it remained unclear when he might be able to do so.
As court came to a close on Tuesday, Judge Amit P. Mehta, who is overseeing the trial, said it might be possible for Mr. McWhirter to testify remotely by a video feed.
Mr. McWhirter is the second known F.B.I. confidential source who was in a position to provide information to federal agents about the Oath Keepers before Jan. 6, raising questions about why investigators did not know more about the attack on the Capitol.
Near the start of Mr. Rhodes’s trial, Abdullah Rasheed, a former Oath Keeper from West Virginia, told the jury that he became alarmed by the violent language Mr. Rhodes used during a video conference with members of his group in November 2020 and provided the F.B.I. with a recording of the call.
“The more I listened to the call,” Mr. Rasheed testified, “it sounded like we were going to war against the United States government.”
Officials at the F.B.I. did not respond to Mr. Rasheed’s initial attempts to contact them and only reached out to him after Jan. 6.
The F.B.I. also had a confidential source in the Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys in the months leading up to Jan. 6. That person, a low-level member of the far-right group, marched with other Proud Boys into the Capitol on Jan. 6. But in meetings with the government before the Capitol was stormed, he told investigators that the organization had not planned to attack the building and stop the certification of the 2020 election.
As part of his cooperation with the government, Mr. McWhirter told the F.B.I. about a nascent plot by the Oath Keepers to ambush someone affiliated with the leftist movement known as antifa in the Pacific Northwest, according to one person familiar with the matter. The F.B.I. had sought to use more aggressive investigative techniques to pursue the case but lacked the evidence to move forward, the person said.
In court on Monday, outside the presence of the jury, prosecutors at Mr. Rhodes’s trial described what appeared to be a similar plot, saying that the F.B.I. had obtained information during its investigation of the Oath Keepers that in September 2020, Mr. Rhodes discussed a plan to lure members of antifa in the Portland, Ore., area into the open and attack them.
Around the time the plot was discussed, a self-described antifa activist from the Portland area was implicated in the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter, Aaron J. Danielson, during a violent skirmish between members of a far-right group called Patriot Prayer and leftist demonstrators. The antifa activist, Michael Reinoehl, was later shot and killed by members of a U.S. marshal’s task force.
Mr. McWhirter once ran the Western Montana Tactical Training Center, which offers classes to military, law enforcement and private gun owners. Last year, he told The Daily Beast that he was selling the business, which includes a shooting range and gun store. But Montana secretary of state records show that the company is active and that Mr. McWhirter is the registered agent.
ImageKelly Meggs, center, in October 2020. Mr. Meggs entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 and is standing trial with the Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes.Credit…Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Lawyers for Mr. Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers charged in the case — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — began their defense last week. The lawyers have focused their efforts on attacking the government’s claim that the five defendants had an explicit plan to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 and disrupt the transfer of power from President Donald J. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Rhodes took the stand on Monday, telling the jury that even though Mr. Meggs, Ms. Watkins and Mr. Harrelson entered the Capitol, he never gave them any orders to do so. Mr. Rhodes also told the jury that he had nothing to do with an armed “quick reaction force” that was stationed at a hotel in Virginia and was poised to rush to the aid of their compatriots at the Capitol if things went wrong.
Source: nytimes.com
