Graydon P. Young testifies in Rhodes seditious conspiracy trial that he thought Capitol breach at time could start a revolution: “I was acting like a traitor, someone acting against my own government.”
A star government witness in the seditious conspiracy trial of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes testified that he believed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol could start a new American revolution potentially led by the extremist group.
“I felt like it was a ‘Bastille-type’ moment in history, like in the French Revolution,” Florida Oath Keepers member Graydon Young testified.
“I guess I was acting like a traitor, someone acting against my own government,” he said in the trial of Rhodes and four others in federal court in Washington.
The testimony on Monday of Young, 57, of the Tampa area, is critical to the prosecution. He is one of three expected witnesses who have pleaded guilty to at least one of three overlapping conspiracies in which Rhodes and others are charged. Oath Keepers co-defendants are accused of being in military-style gear in a “stack” formation outside the Capitol and with staging firearms just outside Washington.
Prosecutors must show that even though Rhodes did not enter the building that day, he and co-defendants conspired to oppose by force the lawful transition of presidential power, to obstruct Congress as it met to certify the 2020 election results, or to impede lawmakers.
Young said he believed there was an implicit understanding among Oath Keepers who participated in encrypted communications with Rhodes that he had called for violently opposing President Biden from taking office, even though Young said there was no specific order to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 or explicit agreement to commit a crime.
“There was no specific plan that you were aware of to breach the doors of the Capitol, is that correct?” Rhodes’s lawyer James Lee Bright asked during cross-examination.
“Yes,” Young replied.
But Young told prosecutor Jeffrey S. Nestler, “I participated in a conspiracy to obstruct Congress. … We were going to disrupt Congress, wherever they were meeting.”
“I felt like it was common-sense. We talked about doing something about fraud in the election when we got there on the 6th, and when crowds went over the barricades into the building, the opportunity presented itself to do something.”
Young, a retired civilian software project manager and Navy Reserves information systems technician, told jurors how after the 2020 election he grew bored by his and his wife’s rental property and child-care businesses and spent “two to six” hours a day following President Donald Trump’s false claims of massive voter fraud.
