From Yale Law to Oath Keepers: Stewart Rhodes’s Unlikely Journey - The New York Times

As a joined begetter with young children, weapon enthusiast and erstwhile Army paratrooper connected a field dominated by liberals, Stewart Rhodes stood retired among the astir 200 students who enrolled astatine Yale Law School successful 2001.

Still, fewer of his erstwhile classmates could person anticipated however sharply their paths would diverge. Jurors are expected to statesman deliberating connected Tuesday whether helium committed seditious conspiracy successful transportation with the Jan. 6 battle connected the Capitol.

“We utilized to gag about, ‘Who’s going to beryllium president? Who’s going to beryllium a Supreme Court clerk?’” said Gabriel Lowenkron, a lawyer successful California and subordinate of Mr. Rhodes’s class. “We ne'er asked who was going to beryllium the seditionist.”

Just 5 years aft their instrumentality schoolhouse graduation, Mr. Rhodes, whose afloat sanction is Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, founded the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia whose members judge that the national authorities is poised to strip citizens of their rights and who vow to disobey what they see unconstitutional orders.

Prosecutors accidental that Mr. Rhodes and different members of the radical plotted to tempest the U.S. Capitol connected Jan. 6, 2021, and forestall the transportation of powerfulness from Donald J. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Rhodes and 10 different Oath Keepers and affiliates are accused of recruiting participants; organizing grooming successful paramilitary combat; coordinating question and logistics; and bringing weapons to the Washington, D.C., country successful the days starring up to Jan. 6. (Five of his associates are connected proceedings now. There volition beryllium different proceedings for others adjacent year.)

Mr. Rhodes has denied readying to onslaught the Capitol, arguing that the Oath Keepers were successful Washington to support salient supporters of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Rhodes’s trajectory from a libertarian pupil astatine Yale to a suspect facing a complaint that carries a maximum condemnation of 20 years successful prison, positive different charges, has riveted and unnerved galore of his erstwhile peers.

Despite its wide reputation, Yale Law School has produced a fig of notable conservatives, including J.D. Vance, the Republican senator-elect from Ohio, who graduated successful 2013, and Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, who was 2 years down Mr. Rhodes. Even so, successful the aboriginal 2000s, Mr. Rhodes was a distinctive beingness connected campus, whose acquisition reflected a gulf successful societal presumption and ideology separating him from galore of his classmates.

“People find ways to separate themselves, either by fitting successful oregon by lasting out,” said Jon Michaels, a prof astatine the U.C.L.A. School of Law and erstwhile classmate. “And my consciousness of Rhodes is, helium was lasting out.”

Through 1 of his lawyers, Mr. Rhodes declined an interrogation request.

At Yale, Mr. Rhodes did not yet person his diagnostic goatee and oculus patch. He was clean-shaven, with a prosthetic eye, the effect of a self-inflicted weapon accident. He had unconventional opinions and could look unusually focused connected weapon rights, erstwhile classmates said. Still, immoderate remembered him arsenic a well-intentioned adjacent who worked to find communal crushed contempt being successful the governmental minority.

The violent attacks connected Sept. 11, 2001, during his 2nd week of instrumentality school, had a profound interaction connected him.

On the witnesser stand, Mr. Rhodes recalled being successful a torts lecture erstwhile quality of the attacks spread.

“A batch of my chap students collapsed, and were conscionable successful heart-rending grief,” helium said, adding, “And of course, aft the grief came the anger.”

In classmates’ memories, and successful Mr. Rhodes’s ain telling, the attacks were a galvanizing infinitesimal that sharpened his governmental ideology. He grew progressively alarmed by the expanded uses of surveillance and detention by the medication of President George W. Bush, which helium saw arsenic unconstitutional overreaches.

“You had the consciousness that helium was benignant of keeping his pulverization dry, for the astir part,” said Stephen Vladeck, a prof astatine the University of Texas School of Law. “The times helium would talk up, it was often astir fears that the authorities was really going excessively acold and infringing connected the rights of Americans.”

His professors astatine Yale declined to beryllium interviewed, galore citing pupil privateness concerns.

Mr. Rhodes, 57, was calved successful Fresno, Calif., his parent a farmworker and his begetter a Marine. He grew up poor, moved frequently, and graduated from precocious schoolhouse successful Las Vegas. He served successful the Army successful the mid-1980s, receiving an honorable discharge pursuing an wounded successful a parachuting accident.

Tasha Adams met Mr. Rhodes successful Las Vegas successful the aboriginal 1990s. He was well-read, fascinated by past and politics, and seemed to committedness a “life of adventure,” Ms. Adams said. They joined successful 1994. In 2018, Ms. Adams, who was progressive successful the Oath Keepers initially but aboriginal distanced herself from the organization, filed for divorce, accusing Mr. Rhodes of carnal and affectional abuse. They stay separated, and the exertion is inactive pending.

Mr. Rhodes attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, wherever helium studied governmental subject and graduated summa cum laude successful 1998. After college, helium worked successful the Washington bureau of Representative Ron Paul, a libertarian-minded Republican from Texas. Mr. Rhodes concisely considered becoming a past teacher, but grew funny successful instrumentality schoolhouse and was accepted astatine Yale.

On the witnesser stand, Mr. Rhodes told the assemblage that an admissions serviceman astatine the instrumentality schoolhouse had told him that she cared astir the “party model.”

“If you’re going to person an absorbing enactment and person absorbing guests, who would you invite?” helium said. “So she wanted radical similar subject veterans, folks from retired West, radical with antithetic backgrounds.”

Jean Webb, the manager of admissions astatine Yale Law School from 1985 to 2002 — including the rhythm successful which Mr. Rhodes was admitted — said that she did not retrieve Mr. Rhodes, and that the enactment metaphor was not 1 she would person used.

There were nary circumstantial thresholds for acceptance oregon standards for diversity, Ms. Webb said, though implicit time, the schoolhouse developed an involvement successful admitting much first-generation students and veterans. Above all, she said, module members were looking for “good thinkers.”

She added that the schoolhouse was besides seeking “people who wanted to beryllium of work to their community, to their country, to beryllium successful enactment positions.”

In class, Mr. Rhodes seemed engaged, but not unusually so, erstwhile classmates said. Malcolm Seymour, a New York litigator and subordinate of Mr. Rhodes’s class, recalled him arsenic a polite, intelligent classmate who often agreed with left-leaning peers connected Bush-era civilian liberties issues.

He taught self-defense classes for pistillate students, and arsenic portion of a radical called the Yale Law Gunners — a play connected a word denoting students who “gun” for the highest achievements — helium took peers shooting astatine a section range. Mr. Rhodes seemed to instrumentality pleasance successful teaching classmates however to sprout a gun, Ms. Adams and erstwhile students said.

Elizabeth Lee Beck, a Miami litigator and subordinate of Mr. Rhodes’s class, said that Mr. Rhodes struck her arsenic tolerant and open-minded wrong an instauration that could seem, to her, oppressively liberal.

“I cognize that immoderate radical presumption him arsenic a scary Nazi,” she said. “I don’t stock that view; he’s conscionable earnest Elmer.”

At home, Mr. Rhodes’s clip successful instrumentality schoolhouse was fraught, Ms. Adams said. They arrived successful New Haven with 2 children and yet welcomed a third. It was a stressful, isolating period, she said.

“He didn’t cognize what to telephone his people erstwhile helium was astatine Yale,” she said, adding that the demands of household and schoolhouse were intense.

She said: “A batch of times helium would conscionable flip maine books and say, ‘I don’t person clip to work this. Read this and springiness maine notes.’”

In the aboriginal 2000s, Yale Law School could consciousness similar a protected bubble, wherever students were “floating successful the satellite of ideas,” said Professor Michaels, from U.C.L.A.

But for Mr. Rhodes, determination were fewer abstract issues. The topics helium became obsessed with often emerged retired of a “deep self-interest,” Ms. Adams said.

In his last year, Mr. Rhodes won a schoolhouse prize for a insubstantial arguing that the Bush administration’s designation of force combatants was “dangerous to our freedoms and mode of life.” Nearly 2 decades later, helium told the assemblage astatine his proceedings that a “big impetus” for his instauration of the Oath Keepers was “what I had learned during the Bush years of enemy-combatant status.”

Mr. Rhodes’s extremist views had already begun to coalesce by the clip helium arrived connected campus, Ms. Adams said, “but helium was ever hiding it.” There were times, though, erstwhile they broke jarringly done to the surface.

During 1 league for a people connected the Bill of Rights, Mr. Rhodes unexpectedly began addressing the people connected weapon rights and passing retired cartoon pamphlets from a fringe enactment called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, said Scott Hershovitz, present a prof astatine the University of Michigan Law School, who was successful that class.

Mr. Rhodes told classmates that helium was not a subordinate of the National Rifle Association due to the fact that it was not assertive capable successful its defence of weapon rights, and was “proud to share” however overmuch much earnestly the Jewish radical took weapon rights, Professor Hershovitz said.

“There were surely different students who were supporters of the Second Amendment and believed that it protected an idiosyncratic close to carnivore arms,” helium said. “There was cipher who had constructed an individuality astir it successful the mode that Rhodes had.”

After graduation, immoderate members of the people of 2004 ascended to the precocious echelons of the ineligible world.

Mr. Rhodes took a antithetic path. He clerked for an Arizona Supreme Court subordinate justice, Michael D. Ryan, a Vietnam War veteran, and past moved to Montana, wherever helium practiced transgression law, touting successful a classified advertisement “Ivy League prime … without Ivy League expense.” He was disbarred by the authorities successful 2015 for violating the Montana Rules of Professional Conduct aft practicing instrumentality successful Arizona without a licence successful the state, and besides failing to amusement up astatine hearings successful Montana to code morals complaints.

Many of Mr. Rhodes’s classmates person struggled to marque consciousness of who helium became. Mr. Seymour, the New York litigator, recalled receiving a announcement from the Southern Poverty Law Center listing the Oath Keepers arsenic an extremist group.

“I saw that it was him, and I had to bash a double-take,” helium said. “Was it the aforesaid Stewart Rhodes? I looked him up and I saw the oculus patch. He was a antithetic idiosyncratic — oregon presenting himself arsenic a antithetic person.”

Still, adjacent with the Oath Keepers, Mr. Rhodes made definite decisions — similar not entering the Capitol himself connected Jan. 6, or, according to Ms. Adams, often explaining “how conspiracy instrumentality worked” to different Oath Keepers — that suggested an knowing of the ineligible repercussions of his actions.

Even arsenic Mr. Rhodes led an enactment imbued with conspiracy theories of a satellite takeover by planetary elites, the stamp of Yale Law appears to person mattered to him. On aboriginal Oath Keepers blogs, helium often noted his credentials, and made his prizewinning insubstantial connected force combatants disposable to readers.

In the days aft Jan. 6, Mr. Rhodes composed a message to beryllium sent to Mr. Trump, urging him to “save the Republic.”

“This is Stewart Rhodes, laminitis of Oath Keepers,” helium wrote. “Army airborne seasoned and Yale Law graduate.”