A little over two years ago, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington obtained a landmark conviction against Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, on charges of seditious conspiracy for the role he played in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
On Friday, the same office — now led by one of President Trump’s appointees, Ed Martin — effectively assumed the role of Mr. Rhodes’s defense lawyer, filing court papers that sought to reverse a federal judge’s order from earlier in the day that barred him and other convicted members of the far-right group from visiting Washington without permission.
The move was a stunning reversal for the prosecutors office, which for more than four years led the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack.
Since taking office as interim U.S. attorney this week, Mr. Martin has been working to execute Mr. Trump’s directive to end any Jan. 6-related criminal cases that are still active, filing a blizzard of motions in Federal District Court in Washington to dismiss them — sometimes drawing angry responses from judges.
The judge’s order barring Mr. Rhodes from Washington came after the far-right leader appeared on Tuesday at the local jail in Washington where many Jan. 6 defendants had been held in recent years. The next day, Mr. Rhodes — known for his piratical black eyepatch — showed up near the scene of the riot: a Dunkin’ Donuts shop in the Longworth House Office Building, adjacent to the Capitol.
As part of the evidence at Mr. Rhodes’s trial, the jury heard a recording of him threatening violence in the days shortly after Jan. 6.