THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 A7
U.S. CAPITOL | JAN. 6 RIOT
Oath Keepers may face conspiracy indictment
prosecutor, said the government
“tends to view conspiracies very
broadly. You need an agreement to
commit a crime, but you don’t need
the actual commission of the underly-
ing crime. But proving that the leaders
agreed that the individuals would do
something can be difficult, because
they would have to show some kind
of meeting of the minds. . . . The best
way to move up the chain in these
kinds of things is by flipping someone
who will testify.”
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The Justice De-
partment and FBI are gathering evi-
dence to try to build a large conspir-
acy indictment against members of
the Oath Keepers for their roles in the
Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, accord-
ing to people familiar with the matter,
but the group’s sometimes fractious
and fantasy-laden internal workings
may complicate efforts to bring such
a case.
In the wake of the short-lived insur-
rection, the Oath Keepers is the most
high-profile, self-styled militia group
in the country. While members use
the jargon and trappings of a paramil-
itary organization, in daily practice
they are often more akin to a collec-
tion of local chapters with a similar,
conspiracy theory-fueled ideology
about what they view as the inevitable
collapse of the U.S. government as it
becomes more tyrannical.
“This was not a well-trained army
or a disciplined military unit, this was
a loose structure,” said Karl Schmae,
who dealt with Oath Keepers when he
was an FBI negotiator responding to
the 2016 occupation of the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern
Oregon.
The Oath Keepers group is a major
target of the sprawling FBI investiga-
tion into the riot at the U.S. Capitol,
along with another militant group, the
Proud Boys, according to the people
familiar with the matter who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to discuss
an ongoing investigation. How ag-
gressively the Justice Department pur-
sues such extremists will be a major
test not only of the Biden administra-
tion’s pledge to combat domestic ter-
Timothy Bullard/The Grants Pass Daily Courier/AP file
An Oath Keepers sign marks the entrance to a property in Southern Oregon while
armed Oath Keeper guards stand in the background in 2015. A crowd had gathered to
support the rights of miners on a claim near the community of Galice that the Bureau
of Land Management wanted to bring into compliance or shut down.
rorism, but the law and the courts.
Twelve alleged Oath Keepers mem-
bers or associates have already been
arrested on charges related to Jan.
6. In court documents, the group’s
founder Stewart Rhodes is usually re-
ferred to not by name but as “Person
One.” The people familiar with the
case said agents are working to see if a
conspiracy case can be made against
Rhodes and other senior members of
the group.
Rhodes, who once worked as a
congressional staffer for former lib-
ertarian congressman Ron Paul, was
in Washington on Jan. 6 but insists
he did not tell his members to attack
Congress, and did not want them to.
The Oath Keepers members who
allegedly went into the U.S. Capitol
“went totally off mission,” Rhodes
said last week in an interview. “There
was a bunch of chaos. And I wanted
to make sure my guys didn’t get into
trouble ... some of them had gone stu-
pid and jumped inside the Capitol.”
Asked if he expected to be charged
with a crime, Rhodes said: “I don’t
know” but prosecutors “are trying to
manufacture a nonexistent conspir-
acy. I didn’t say, ‘Don’t enter the Cap-
itol.’ I never figured they would do
that.”
Peter Skinner, a former federal
The Oath Keepers’ beginnings
Rhodes, a former Army para-
trooper who wears an eye patch due
to an accident with a firearm, started
the Oath Keepers in 2009 with the
stated mission of preventing a “full-
blown totalitarian dictatorship,” and
the group has emphasized recruit-
ment among members of the military
and law enforcement.
Apocalyptic talk has always been
central to the appeal of the Oath
Keepers. Days before the 2016 elec-
tion, members spoke openly about
that election sparking the country’s
demise and offered an online course
about what items to stock up on, how
to stay warm outdoors, and how to set
up a “kill zone maze” in communities
to defeat imagined attackers.
By August of last year, the Oath
Keepers had more than 30,000 Twitter
followers, and hundreds of thousands
on Facebook, before those sites barred
Rhodes from posting further, saying
he had incited violence, including
by declaring: “Civil war is here, right
now,” and predicting “open warfare
with Marxist insurrectionists by Elec-
tion Day.”
Justice Department: Riot
probe among largest ever
U.S. prosecutors on Friday
sketched out the gargantuan scope
of the investigation in the Jan. 6 Cap-
itol breach, asking for courts to delay
most cases by at least two months
after being pressed by a handful
of defendants and some judges to
speed up trials and plea offers.
“The investigation and prosecu-
tion of the Capitol Attack will likely
be one of the largest in American his-
tory, both in terms of the number of
defendants prosecuted and the na-
ture and volume of the evidence,” the
U.S. attorney’s office in the District
of Columbia wrote in morning court
filings in seeking a delay before turn-
ing over evidence to defendants.
Charges have been brought
against 312 people and are expected
against at least 100 more, according
to court officials and prosecutors.
Investigators have executed more
than 900 electronic and physical
search warrants, and amassed more
than 15,000 hours of law enforce-
ment surveillance and body-camera
video, 1,600 electronic devices and
210,000 tips, prosecutors said.
With the volume of cases and ev-
idence only growing, “the unusual
complexity of the Capitol Attack
investigation warrants” postpone-
ment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn
Rakoczy and others wrote in a filing
Friday involving “key figure” Caldwell,
who is charged with eight other al-
leged associates of the right-wing, an-
ti-government Oath Keepers group.
— The Washington Post
He Got Lucky. She Didn’t.
PMG file photo
State Sen. Lew Frederick wants to change the way the board that oversees statewide police conduct goes
about its business.
Continued from previous page
knew the use of confidential
databases was misconduct be-
cause he sat on the Police Pol-
icy Committee where officers
often were reviewed for using
the databases to, as he put it,
“hook up with female subjects.”
Halupowski told investiga-
tors he’d made “concessions” to
his daughter’s drug addiction,
adding “I’m just trying to keep
my kid alive.”
According to the investiga-
tor’s findings, Halupowski’s
divorce and years of caring for
his daughter during relapses
was “a hardship not all persons
may understand (but) it does
not absolve Craig Halupowski
from adhering to department
policies and the oath he took to
obey the laws of the land and
regulation of this department.
“Craig Halupowski’s actions
have torn away his integrity
and trust that are necessary to
be a Woodburn Police officer,”
the investigator added.
On April 1, 2020, Ha-
lupowski resigned.
On April 21, Ferraris, the
Woodburn chief, notified Mar-
ion County District Attorney
Paige Clarkson that the cop
was under investigation, likely
would have been fired, and she
should be mindful of his his-
tory before calling him to tes-
tify in any future cases where
he made an arrest.
The chief forwarded the
letter to the state, and on July 13,
DPSST revoked Halupowski’s
law enforcement certification.
Halupowski did not oppose it.
Sen. Lew Frederick said of-
ficers sometimes compromise
themselves, don’t have support
to help them, and then “dig
themselves even deeper in the
hole.
“That’s what it sounds like
with this guy, that he just kept
digging and kept digging.”
to keep his daughter happy to
keep her from taking drugs or
leaving for good.
“Did I enable a lot of stuff?
Yeah, I did. Did I make a lot of
mistakes? Yeah, I did.
“And the good thing is my
kid now has been clean and
sober for over a year. And so
there actually isn’t a day that
goes by that I … regret any-
thing I did.”
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Halupowski: I didn’t
ask for help
Halupowski’s take?
He’d lost his zeal to be a cop.
His ex didn’t tell him what
his daughter was doing, so he
started tracking her using a
criminal database to see if she
was being arrested or sent to
the hospital. He’d been hanging
on in part to keep health insur-
ance for his daughter.
“The department came af-
ter me hot and heavy and that’s
fine,” he said. “It was obvious
they were gunning for me.”
Would psychological sup-
port have helped?
“The thing with psycho-
logical help is you have to ask.
And that’s something a lot of
us don’t like to do,” he said,
adding that he’d been trying
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