The founder of the Oath Keepers militia begged President Donald Trump to issue him a full pardon—not just a commutation—for his conviction over his key role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“I’m definitely, of course, appreciative and grateful for President Trump for getting me out of prison,” Stewart Rhodes said Sunday during an interview with Real America’s Voice. “But I was completely innocent like my co-defendants.”
In May 2023, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy after he was found guilty of helping to orchestrate the violent attempt to overthrow former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
ADVERTISEMENT
Using encrypted communications, Rhodes helped recruit and train rioters, brought paramilitary gear and weapons to Washington, D.C., and helped breach the Capitol building. While the angry mob attacked police officers inside, Rhodes remained outside coordinating the attack, according to the Department of Justice. He then continued plotting even after the riot failed to stop the election’s certification until he was arrested in 2022.
On his first day in office, Trump pardoned about 1,500 of the Capitol rioters, which effectively wiped out the convictions. He also commuted the sentences of 14 people—including Rhodes—found guilty of organizing and leading the attack. The commutations keep the convictions in place but reduce the punishments.
Rhodes said Sunday he was “still not quite sure why” he was given a commutation instead of a pardon.
“What that means is that although our prison sentences are ended—we’re free—we are still second-class citizens because we’re all still felons,” he told Real America’s Voice.
During the interview he wore his trademark cowboy hat and eyepatch; he lost his eye in his 20s after he accidentally dropped a gun and it went off.
As a felon, Rhodes can’t own a gun, can’t vote in his home state of Texas, and has been stripped of his veterans benefits, he said. He was a paratrooper in the Army until he was injured in a parachuting accident, leaving him with a fused spine.
While he was being held in solitary confinement in prison, he got a “really nasty letter” from the Department of Veterans Affairs, he claimed.
“They sent me a letter saying all that’s wiped out,” he said. “No more veterans benefits at all, or healthcare, and I can’t be buried in a veterans cemetery now.”
He added that others whose sentences were only commuted are also “in the same boat.”
“We’re all in this position of being second-class citizens and having our benefits stripped from us,” Rhodes said. “We really need a pardon.”
