That’s what Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (photo, left) told his followers after Biden won the 2020 election.
I don’t care whether he accepts it or not. He doesn’t decide who governs us. He gets one vote like the rest of us.
He doesn’t have to like the election results; that’s his privilege. But he’s not some supernumerary with a special privilege to overrule 81,268,924 other voters because he doesn’t like who they elected.
Rhodes isn’t some low-information Trumper who can’t pass a 9th grade civics test. He graduated from Yale Law School and was a practicing lawyer in Montana before he organized one of America’s most virulent and violent rightwing militia groups, taking special pains to recruit military and police personnel.
He’ll soon go on trial for conspiracy, as a consequence of his role in the Capitol riot. Prosecutors will allege he and his co-conspirators spent the days after the election “amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary training and readying armed teams” to prevent Biden from becoming president, the Associated Press says (here).
On Jan. 6, 2021, an Oath Keepers group “in battle gear” shouldered through the mob and stormed the Capitol “in military style stack formation,” the AP says, adding they were “so determined to overturn Biden’s victory” some were willing to die trying.
The election was on Nov. 3, 2020, although it wasn’t called for Biden until Nov. 6; on Nov. 9, “Rhodes held a conference call and rallied the Oath Keepers to go to Washington and fight. … By December, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers had set their sights on Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote. … On Dec. 23, he published an open letter on the Oath Keepers website declaring … they might have to ‘take to arms in defense of our God given liberty.'”
Over the next week or so, he spent at least $22,500 on guns, sights, magazines, night vision goggles, and other equipment. He told his followers they might have to use “lethal force” against anyone who tried to remove Trump from the White House, including National Guard members.
If that isn’t fomenting insurrection, I don’t know what is.
If he’s convicted, Rhodes won’t be disbarred as a lawyer. Because he’s already disbarred. This wasn’t his first bad behavior.