New charges accuse Ohio bartender of sedition with leader of the Oath Keepers in attack on U.S. Capitol

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CLEVELAND, Ohio – A rural Ohio bartender who authorities say led militia members during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was charged Thursday with seditious conspiracy, the most serious allegation filed in connection with the attack on the nation’s democracy.

Jessica Watkins, 39, of Woodstock in Champaign County was one of 11 people indicted in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on charges that include conspiracy to obstruct official business and conspiracy to prevent a police officer from performing official duties.

Watkins was originally indicted last year on conspiracy charges that accused her of training and leading a team of militia members linked to the far-right wing group the Oath Keepers into the Capitol.

The new charges Thursday suggest that Watkins was a key planner in the attack on the Capitol, as members of Congress sought to verify the election results that put President Joseph Biden in the White House.

The charge of seditious conspiracy is seldom used in America. It dates to the late 1700s, and it involves two or more citizens’ attempt to revolt through force against the U.S. government. It carries a maximum 20-year sentence.

Watkins has been in detention for the past year. She is one of 36 people from Ohio accused in the attack on the Capitol. She was scheduled to go to trial in April on the original conspiracy charges. The indictment unsealed Thursday appears to have changed that.

Watkins’ attorney, Michelle Peterson, declined to discuss the new charges.

The seditious conspiracy allegations are “the most serious charges that can be brought here,” said Jeffrey Swartz, a professor at Western Michigan University’s Thomas Cooley Law School.

“The thing that people will say is that these charges are political, that this will be a show trial,” Swartz said. “But sedition and insurrection are political crimes. Of course, this will be about politics.”

The attack and violent protest took place after thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump heeded his call to fight as patriots for their country. Soon after Trump’s speech to “Stop the Steal,” many rioters broke through barricades and stormed the Capitol.

Some sought to find legislators, while others ransacked offices and stole property. They chanted for Trump and demanded that Congress listen to them.

The indictment unsealed Thursday charges Watkins with 10 others, including Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers. He was arrested Thursday in Little Elm, Texas.

Rhodes, 56, is accused of using encrypted and private communications to organize an attempt to oppose by force the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. The Associated Press reported that Rhodes did not enter the Capitol, but the indictment alleges that he helped engineer the attack.

The day after the election, Rhodes wrote to other members of the Oath Keepers.

“We must now do what people of Serbia did when Milosevic stole their election. Refuse to accept it and march en-masse to the Capitol,” the indictment quotes Rhodes. He was referring to Slobodan Milosevic, who served as Serbia’s president in the 1990s.

Prosecutors also obtained statements Watkins sent to her followers, including the need for them to be “fighting fit by inauguration.”

The indictment alleges that Watkins joined other Oath Keepers and marched in a stack formation up the east steps of the Capitol. They joined other rioters and entered the building. Later, another group of Oath Keepers followed, according to the indictment.

Watkins told others around her to “push, push, push” as they bolted up the steps, the indictment says. She also yelled, “They can’t hold us.”

After her arrest last year, Watkins criticized the Oath Keepers and backed away from them. In an April profile, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer examined how Watkins, who served in the Army and worked as an emergency medical technician, could become warped through social media.

“Yeah. We stormed the Capitol today,” Watkins wrote afterward on social media. “Teargassed, the whole 9. Pushed our way into the rotunda. Made it into the Senate even. The news is lying (even Fox) about the historic events we created today.”

Peterson, Watkins’ attorney, wrote in court filings last year that her client “believes in the sanctity of the government and the importance of law and order.”

She stressed, however, that Watkins fell prey to online comments of Trump supporters. Watkins believed that her militia needed to protect people in Washington during the rally, the attorney said in documents.

“In November [2020], she believed that the president of the United States was calling upon her and her small militia group to support the president and the Constitution, and she was ready to serve her country in that manner,” Peterson wrote.

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