Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell Testifies in Jan 6-Related Case – Taking the stand in his own defense for the first time on Tuesday, Oath Keepers member Thomas Caldwell denied organizing a group of armed man plotting to ferry heavy weaponry across the Potomac River on Jan. 6, 2021.
Caldwell also offered a homespun definition of what he believes a “militia” means inside the Shenandoah Valley region in Virginia.
Oath Keepers member Thomas Caldwell shouts at members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, in this still frame from a video submitted into evidence at his trial.
Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell Testifies in Jan 6-Related Case
Residents there think of it as “neighbors helping neighbors,” Caldwell said.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers militia with crimes related to the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Five of them, including Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, stand accused of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government or the execution of its laws by force.
Within this alleged conspiracy, prosecutors say, Caldwell played the unique role of organizing the Oath Keepers’ so-called quick reaction force, or QRF. This group allegedly stashed heavy weapons inside a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., in case they needed to ferry those firearms across the Potomac River on Jan. 6.
Asked about encrypted messages speaking of that plan, Caldwell claimed that his reaction was: “Whose stupid freaking idea is this?”
He depicted his own messages referring to heavy weapons as the rhetorical flourish of an amateur scribe.
“I’ve gotta own that,” Caldwell said. “I do a bit of creative writing.”
Before the government rested its case, prosecutors showed a jury surveillance footage from the Comfort Inn, which showed Caldwell apparently carting around boxes of firearms on a dolly. Rhodes did not dispute that Oath Keepers members stashed weapons in the hotel during his testimony. FBI witnesses also mapped out how Oath Keepers’ members cell phones pinged with towers from across the country, converging at the hotel.
Oath Keepers members Thomas Caldwell and Kenneth Harrelson move a cart of what prosecutors allege to be weapons inside a Comfort Inn in Virginia, for their so-called “Quick Reaction Force.” Prosecutors allege that they planned to ferry those firearms across the Potomac if then-President Trump called them. (Photo via DOJ)
On Monday, wife Sharon Caldwell — who is not an Oath Keeper herself, but wore the group’s shirt on Jan. 6 — openly acknowledged that FBI agents found 70 legal firearms in their residence. They did not seize those weapons at the time, but her husband is now prohibited from accessing them by court order.
Both husband and wife spent much of their testimony focusing on Thomas Caldwell’s age and infirmities. Sharon Caldwell said her husband wore “Depends,” not body armor on Jan. 6, referring to the adult diaper. Mr. Caldwell told the jury that he grapples with incontinence issues from spinal issues that necessitated in surgeries.
“When you have spinal issues, sometimes that affects bowel and bladder,” Thomas Caldwell noted. “It just does, and when you gotta go, you gotta go.”
Caldwell, a 20-year Navy veteran who received a disability termination, is now 68 years old and was 65 years old at the time of the U.S. Capitol breach. That would have placed him at the exact age to meet the National Institutes of Health’s definition of “elderly,” and just a few years north of qualifying as a senior citizen.
In conjunction with his various health issues — Caldwell also told jurors he had a big, brass pin keeping his shoulder in place — his defense team hopes that it will lead the jury to conclude that the Oath Keeper was too old and frail to seditiously conspire to overthrow the U.S. government.
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