Judging Freedom - Oath Keeper Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

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Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 30th, Feast of St. Andrew. Not me, one of the apostles. Wednesday, November 30th, 2022.

It's a little after three o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Late yesterday afternoon, actually into the evening, Stuart Rhodes, who's the founder and head of the Oath Keepers, was convicted in United States District Court in Washington, D.C. of seditious conspiracy. Well, seditious conspiracy, basically sedition, is an attempt or an agreement to overthrow the government of the United States by force. It's obviously not successful. If it were successful, then there'd be no Justice Department around to prosecute him. So sedition by nature is a failure. One form of sedition is an attempt to overthrow. The other form of sedition is an attempt to overthrow. The other form of sedition is an agreement to overthrow. Um Mr. Rhodes was

convicted of an agreement to overthrow uh excuse me of an attempt to overthrow which is the more serious of the two. So an agreement is just a meeting of the minds and attempt is a meeting of the minds where you actually try and achieve what the agreement is, but you fall short of it. What did he do? All he did was engage in conversations with people. No weapons were drawn. His people were not the ones that physically prevented the Congress from meeting. This is a guy who's going to go to jail for up to 20 years for the use of mere words. In my opinion, the statute is unconstitutional.

The prosecution was unconstitutional. He should be as free a person as the rest of us who are watching this show right now are. Every definition of crime in the Western world, every valid, legitimate, acceptable, moral, legal definition of the word crime includes the word harm in it. What harm was there to the words he exercised, he never set foot into the Capitol building. He wasn't even in Washington, D.C. on the day of January 6th. But he is the prized possession, the prized scalp on the belt of the Justice Department. He is the biggest fish that they have prosecuted, though he was acquitted of some of the lesser offenses, he was convicted of the principal one, sedition. That carries 20 years in a federal prison. This Yale Law School graduate, who's probably in his mid to late 50s by now, would be

spending the rest of his life in jail for words that he used, the result of which harmed no one. Okay. I know there are arguments on the other side. The government needs to stay in existence, but this is a wrong case in which to demonstrate that. We'll see where it goes. His own lawyer said it was a very fair trial. The judge bent over backwards to be fair to the defense. I don't even know what appealable issues there are. You can't appeal a case just because you don't like the verdict. You have to find errors that the judge made that are sufficient for you to persuade an appellate court that if he had not made those errors, the outcome would have been different. I don't know that those errors exist or can even be offered to an appellate

court, but we'll see where this goes. You usually have a different team of lawyers representing you in a criminal appeal, experts in appellate advocacy, rather than the trial lawyers who actually represented you in the courtroom. Morris, we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.