Ed Tarpley, Jr. enlightened Winnfield Rotarians on October 16 on the federal government’s prosecution of Stewart Rhodes, III, for seditious conspiracy and other charges in connection with the breach of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mr. Tarpley is an attorney who served a term as Grant Parish District Attorney several years ago, and currently has offices in Alexandria. He represented Mr. Rhodes in the federal prosecution along with two other attorneys.

Rotarian of the Day, Jerry Price, invited Mr. Tarpley, his brother-in-law, to inform the Rotary Club about the Rhodes case. Tarpley explained that the U. S. Department of Justice and the FBI used “geographical fencing” to identify everyone carrying a cell phone who were in the vicinity of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, and rounded up about 1500 people as a result. He considers the use of technology in this manner an unconstitutional invasion of the rights of those identified by this method. As he explained, “It was a violation of their First Amendment right to protest.”

Tarpley said that Attorney General Garland decided to go after everyone in the vicinity of the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in contrast to the usual procedure in cases of riotous behavior, which is to only pursue prosecution of people who committed violent actions and to forego prosecution of people whose behavior was only minor conduct warranting only misdemeanor charges. The FBI rounded up about 1500 people with its geo-fencing methods and proceeded to bring charges against all of them, including Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oathkeepers. 

According to Tarpley, the Department of Justice created its own narrative that the January 6 protest at the Capitol Building was an insurrection to accuse the defendants of “seditious conspiracy,” and insurrection. However, Tarpley says, it was not an insurrection, just a few people got “out of hand” and did some crazy things. The government alleged that there was an organized plan to attack the Capitol to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote on the presidential election held in November 2020, and claimed the Oathkeepers group was the advance guard of the attack. 

The defendants in Rhodes’s case were accused of insurrection, which is an attempt to overthrow the government. But Tarpley says there was no evidence of an organized attempt to overthrow the government, no evidence that Mr. Trump wanted anyone to attack the Capitol, and no evidence of any plan to attack the Capitol. The government never identified any of the alleged “provocateurs” of an insurrection or a seditious conspiracy, which means two or more people working together in an effort to overthrow the government. Mr. Rhodes and one other person were convicted of seditious conspiracy, while three others charged were acquitted. On other charges against several defendants in the trial, seven were found guilty and thirteen were acquitted.

Tarpley maintains that Rhodes was prosecuted not for what he did on January 6, because he never entered the Capitol Building, but for what he said on his website and other social media about voter fraud and irregularities and his statements that Biden should be prevented from taking office.

On January 6, 2021, what Trump and his supporters wanted was to object to the counting of the electoral votes, under the Electoral Act of 1887, so that Congress could consider the allegations of voter fraud in the states which were the subject of lawsuits after the election. Six objections were anticipated but only two of the objections had been considered when the riot began, and the objection process was interrupted. When the session resumed afterward, the other four objections were withdrawn and not considered by Congress. It would have made no sense for Trump to have wanted the Capitol to be attacked during the process of objecting to the electoral votes in states with voting challenges.

Tarpley was highly critical of the DOJ, which he believes jacked up charges against the defendants, whose handling of the prosecutions he considers shameful, and should not have been done. Also, the prosecutors in the case were difficult to deal with, contrary to the usual way they handle cases, and all the presiding judges were harsh toward the defendants.