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President Joe Biden’s sweeping 11-year pardon for his son Hunter makes it much easier for President-elect Donald J. Trump to issue pardons to all of the more than 1,560 Jan. 6 defendants, the founder of the Oath Keepers says.

Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, 59, who is serving an 18-year Jan. 6 prison term for seditious conspiracy and tampering with documents or evidence, said he is glad to see Biden acknowledge that the U.S. Department of Justice engages in selective prosecution.

“Now Biden finally agrees with President Trump and us J6 political prisoners who have been pointing out that reality for years — that our legal system has become utterly corrupted, politicized, and ‘weaponized’ for ‘raw politics,’” Rhodes told Blaze News in a statement from the federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland.

Rhodes said Trump is keenly aware of the weaponized justice system, having been charged in a Florida classified documents case that was later dismissed, a Jan. 6 obstruction case in Washington, D.C., several cases in New York state, and one in Georgia.

Not to mention a one-sided investigation by the Jan. 6 Select Committee, two impeachments that resulted in acquittals, and civil lawsuits brought by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the District of Columbia, and private individuals.

‘In Biden’s alternate reality, his son’s prosecution alone is unfair and political.’

“President Trump now knows exactly what it is like to go through a kangaroo-court, Stalinistic show trial in a leftist court with leftists jurors and a leftist judge,” Rhodes said. “He also knows that he will have no meaningful review by any leftist appellate court either in state or federal court. So he knows that the only way any of these oppressed and persecuted patriots are ever going to have their rights actually defended is if President Trump himself does it by issuing pardons or commutations.

“Biden pardoning his son does make it harder for anyone to criticize President Trump when he pardons us J6 political prisoners,” Rhodes said. “Of course, the left will still scream bloody murder and is already ramping up a campaign to demonize all of us, and especially those of us who have a higher profile. The defamatory hit pieces have already begun.”

Selective prosecution?

“But all that noise and false outrage will have even less credibility now that Biden has pardoned his son despite his obvious guilt while thousands of other Americans continue to rot in prison for doing the exact same thing,” Rhodes said.

When Biden issued his pardon on Dec. 1, he said Hunter Biden had been “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” by the DOJ on gun and tax charges. The pardon was backdated to 2014, blunting any possible prosecution related to alleged kickbacks from Ukraine and China.

Selective prosecution has been alleged in many Jan. 6 criminal cases, but judges in the Washington, D.C., federal district court have not allowed it as a defense.

Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III testifies before the Jan. 6 Select Committee on June 9, 2022.Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

In a trial that ran from Sept. 27 to Nov. 29, 2022, Rhodes argued that he was being prosecuted for his speech before, during, and after Jan. 6. Rhodes had urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 and use his authority to to declassify a cache of documents to expose the deep state and societal elites. Rhodes had said that if Trump did not act, others would pay the price in a bloody revolution.

Rhodes didn’t go inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 but was accused by the DOJ of an implied conspiracy to attack the Capitol and oppose the authority of the U.S. government by force. The FBI testified in the first Oath Keepers trial that there was no plan to go into or attack the Capitol, although a group of Oath Keepers did enter the Capitol through the Columbus Doors after 2:30 p.m.

“In Biden’s alternate reality, his son’s prosecution alone is unfair and political, but all the other prosecutions are perfectly fine,” Rhodes said. “All the J6 prosecutions? My 18-year sentence for standing outside the Capitol and exercising my right to political free speech while harming nobody? That’s fine.

‘Give them all pardons so they can finally speak the truth without fear of being punished for it.’

“Enrique Tarrio’s 22-year sentence while he wasn’t even in D.C. on Jan 6? That’s fine,” Rhodes said. “The 14-year sentence for Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, who is on video helping police inside the Capitol? That’s fine.”

Rhodes said he and others were targeted “because of who we are, not because of anything we did” in order to create a narrative of Trump-ordered insurrection at the Capitol. All to keep Trump from continuing in the presidency after Jan. 20, 2021.

“But [Biden’s] drug-addict felon son, caught red-handed lying on federal firearms forms and in possession of a firearm, that prosecution is unfair and only motivated by politics? C’mon, man!”

A blanket pardon would allow those who were coerced into giving false testimony to come forward and expose anyone who put them up to it, Rhodes said.

“The only way to fully unwind the ‘lawfare’ and unwind the Big Lie of Jan. 6 and to begin the dismantling of this empire of lies is to give them all pardons so they can finally speak the truth without fear of being punished for it,” Rhodes said.

The 2022 Oath Keepers trial was fueled by false testimony, Rhodes said. He was acquitted of conspiracy to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress and conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging their duties.

Rhodes’ conviction for obstruction of an official proceeding was likely invalidated by a June 28 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Fischer v. United States. Rhodes has not filed to have the verdict tossed or for a resentencing without the 20-year obstruction felony.

“That’s why I think President Trump should pardon everyone, including these turncoats who sold out and committed the sin of bearing false witness and the crime of perjury,” Rhodes said. “They too should be pardoned so they are free to speak out and finally tell the truth and testify against the prosecutors who engaged in the crime of subornation of perjury.”

Daniel Ball, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., said the DOJ would have no comment on the subornation of perjury allegation.

Veterans’ benefits stripped

The pardons can “set right” the denial of rightfully earned Veterans Affairs benefits that were stripped from many Jan. 6 defendants, he said.

Rhodes served in the U.S. Army as an infantryman in a long-range scout reconnaissance unit. Due to a service injury, Rhodes said he is rated by the VA as 50% disabled.

“I nearly died in a parachuting accident on a night jump while doing very dangerous rough-terrain parachuting training that broke my back and left me with a permanently fused spine, with steel rods holding it all together,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes said he received a letter from the VA “notifying me that I had now been stripped of all my disabled-veteran benefits, and now I cannot even be buried in a veterans’ cemetery when I die. That is the most horrific insult I have ever received in my life. That and being stripped of my right to keep and bear arms and my right to vote.”

Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III speaks to media at the University of California Berkeley in 2017.
Oath Keepers photo

A lifelong Republican, Rhodes said he has responsibly carried a concealed weapon his entire adult life in order to protect his family and those around him. As a felon, Rhodes will not be able to possess firearms.

“All that has been stripped from me,” Rhodes said. “Only a pardon will set that right and restore me to my rightful place as a full citizen. And I am not alone in that. The same is true of many other J6 defendants who are also veterans and also sheepdogs.”

If he issues pardons, Trump would follow in the footsteps of Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington pardoned those found guilty of treason in the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion tax protest. Jefferson pardoned men who had been convicted and imprisoned under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Rhodes said.

“In both cases, those amazing Founding Fathers pardoned all involved as a way to dial back the dangerously heated political turmoil of that time,” he said.

“And when Jefferson pardoned the men imprisoned for their free speech under the Sedition Acts, he did so in defense of the First Amendment, even though not one federal court had overturned a single conviction.”

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