A federal prosecutor said Friday that the federal government’s “working understanding” is that the Oath Keepers had a “quick reaction force” stationed outside the District of Columbia on Jan. 6, prepared with weapons during the siege at the Capitol.
The comments came during a detention hearing for Jessica Watkins, 38, the Oath Keeper from Ohio charged with conspiracy and other crimes for leading members of that group into the Capitol. Watkins is facing some of the most serious charges to come out of the insurrection. A grand jury indicted her andassociated with the Oath Keepers on charges of descending on the Capitol in “an organized and practiced fashion” to stop Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden as president.
That followed an earlier exchange in which the judge pressed the prosecutor on the question of whether there was a quick reaction force stationed outside Washington, DC. “I know there was evidence of planning,” the judge said. “Does the government have evidence that there were in fact … people with weapons?”
At that point, the prosecutor and judge went off the record in a conversation that reporters could not hear Judge Mehta, at the end of Friday’s hearing, said that “the most disturbing aspect of the planning in these cases is the” quick reaction force. He also noted: “The threats to democracy and threats on the capitol have not fully abated.”
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