“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!!” one defendant wrote. “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!”
Six additional people associated with the Oath Keepers organization were arrested this week in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol after a federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment that laid out a conspiracy to block the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College win.
The superseding indictment, which replaced a Jan. 27 indictment returned against three defendants, also lays out how members of the right-wing group saw then-President Donald Trump sending them clear messages to fight to overturn the November election results on his behalf. The new indictment cites an article on the Oath Keepers website that tells members it is “CRITICAL that all patriots who can be in DC get to DC to stand tall in support of President Trump’s fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup, through the massive vote fraud and related attacks on our Republic.”
The six new defendants are now co-defendants alongside Thomas Caldwell, Donavan Crowl and Jessica Watkins, who were previously charged. The new defendants ― 54-year-old Graydon Young of Englewood, Florida; 52-year-old Kelly Meggs and 59-year-old Connie Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida; 52-year-old Laura Steele of Thomasville, North Carolina; and 62-year-old Sandra Ruth Parker and 70-year-old Bennie Alvin Parker of Morrow, Ohio ― are now all charged as part of a criminal conspiracy to interfere with the certification of the Electoral College results. Continue reading.