John Jefferson
Left: Kellye SoRelle (YouTube/Jon Francis campaign video). Right: Stewart Rhodes (Collin County (Tex.) Jail).
A week after a judge deemed Kellye SoRelle mentally competent to stand trial, the former Oath Keepers attorney and onetime girlfriend to convicted seditionist and Oath Keepers leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes has pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.
According to an unopposed motion requesting that the U.S. Marshals Service to pay for her round-trip expenses between her residence in Austin, Texas, to the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., SoRelle, 44, will formally enter her guilty plea this month. Court records described her as “indigent” and neither prosecutors nor the judge were opposed to U.S. marshals assisting SoRelle financially so she could make her court appearance. Though originally scheduled for July 17, a minute order entered on the docket Tuesday shows U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has vacated that date and set it instead for July 18.
A copy of SoRelle’s plea agreement was not yet entered on the docket as of Tuesday morning.
As Law&Crime previously reported, in June 2023, Mehta, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, deemed SoRelle “mentally incompetent” to face trial following her September 2022 arrest. After an examination by the Bureau of Prisons, she was restored to competency in February and ordered released from custody as she awaited trial on charges that she conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding, obstructed justice by tampering with documents, and entered and remained in a restricted building or grounds. This latter charge is a misdemeanor; all of the others are felonies.
When she was first charged, prosecutors alleged SoRelle told fellow rioters, specifically, members of the far right Oath Keepers, to withhold records from a grand jury probe into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. She had assumed leadership of the network in January 2022 after Rhodes was arrested.
Memorably, SoRelle was also one of the attorneys behind a lawsuit alleging rampant voter fraud in January 2021 where she joined Paul Davis, a Texas lawyer fired from his job after recording himself at the Capitol on Jan. 6, to argue that Joe Biden was not the legitimate president. The duo memorably invoked the “Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien to make their argument.
Though prosecutors have never alleged that SoRelle used force to stop the certification of the 2020 election, they have alleged that she and Rhodes conspired to disrupt the session and on the day of the attack, as Rhodes stalked the Capitol’s exterior, the two stayed in regular contact. She allegedly stayed outside of the Capitol in a restricted zone, earning her the misdemeanor trespassing charge.
At the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial in 2022, evidence and testimony from Rhodes illuminated claims that SoRelle urgently told members of the network to “clam up” about Jan. 6 after the Capitol assault unfolded. Prosecutors said SoRelle acted as a sort of conduit for Rhodes, communicating for him through her cellphone since his was turned off as the couple drove more than a thousand miles back to Texas from Washington, D.C.
Rhodes put the blame squarely on his former girlfriend when he testified in November 2022 saying she sent the messages on her own accord. But prosecutors argued it was Rhodes who had control over SoRelle and that he frequently manipulated her to do his bidding. Notably, when testifying, Rhodes bragged about his sexual encounters with her and at one point smiled and laughed as he described her alleged sexual proclivities and how she was a “sub” or intimately submissive to him.
Other evidence at trial emerged alleging that Rhodes made SoRelle his main point person between the Oath Keepers network and those leading the pro-Donald Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, including Roger Stone and Ali Alexander. SoRelle was also one of the lawyers who attended the meeting between Rhodes and currently imprisoned convicted seditionist and former leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, in an underground parking garage on Jan. 5, 2021.
Before SoRelle enters her plea on July 17, prosecutors will likely address burgeoning issues surrounding at least two of the charges against her that could be affected by the recent decision from the Supreme Court in Fischer v. United States.
In that case, the high court determined last month that federal prosecutors cannot apply an obstruction statute to Jan. 6 defendants charged with corruptly obstructing or impeding an official proceeding. Justices ruled 6-3 to narrow the statute significantly so that it could only be applied to the destruction of documents or records. If the obstruction and conspiracy charges she faces are dropped, it could be a major boon for her: both charges carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison, though she would be exceedingly unlikely to receive such a hefty sentence anyway. Rhodes himself, the very leader of the network, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May 2023.
But that doesn’t mean SoRelle is entirely in the clear: her evidence tampering charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The trespassing charge poses a penalty of up to a year in prison.
Precisely what afflicted SoRelle was never revealed in court records beyond a general description that she suffered from a “mental disease or defect,” an order from June 2023 stated.
An attorney for SoRelle did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
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