By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A member of the far-right Oath Keepers group showed a jury on Wednesday an AR-15 assault-style rifle and a box of ammunition that he brought to a hotel ahead of the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 , the latest evidence in the trial of the group’s leader and four others charged with seditious conspiracy.
Terry Cummings, a Florida resident and witness in the trial, said he joined the Oath Keepers in 2020 because he was frustrated with violence and protests that broke out in the streets of cities around the country in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd.
Cummings displayed the gun in court and testified that his weapon was one of many he saw stockpiled inside a hotel room in northern Virginia on Jan. 6 as part of what prosecutors say was a plan to ferry arms into the capital if called upon.
When asked why he brought his firearm with him, Cummings said he brought it not for an “offensive situation, but more as a show of force.”
Cummings took the witness stand in the trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four co-defendants – Jessica Watkins, Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson and Kelly Meggs.
The five are accused of conspiring to try to keep Republican President Donald Trump in power after he had lost the 2020 election. A pro-Trump mob charged into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and violently attacked police, but failed to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory.
The five are charged with seditious conspiracy, a rarely prosecuted crime under a statute dating to the Civil War era that is defined as attempting “to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States.” It carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
Prosecutors have said some of the Oath Keepers were among the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol building after he gave a speech repeating his false claims that the election had been stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
The government also alleges the Oath Keepers organized a so-called “quick reaction force” of armed members who were waiting across the Potomac River in Virginia if called upon. Cummings said on Wednesday he traveled to Washington with Harrelson and Jason Dolan, another member who pleaded guilty in September 2021 for his role in the attack.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, editing by Ross Colvin and Aurora Ellis)
