US District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Thursday that the jury in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy case will not see the “death list” prosecutors say was found in the home of one of the defendants.
Prosecutors say the list was found during a search of the home of Thomas Caldwell when he was arrested in January 2021. The handwritten note was titled “DEATH LIST” and included two Georgia election workers’ names on it, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea Moss. Freeman and Moss were central to a conspiracy theory focusing on voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
While testifying at the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riots, Freeman and Moss said they were harassed constantly by supporters of former President Trump.
Mehta had already ruled that prosecutors could not use the document, calling it “too prejudicial,” but lawyers for the Department of Justice asked that she reconsider. They argued that Caldwell’s defense attorney, David Fischer, had opened the door to the list when he claimed during the cross-examination of an FBI agent that Caldwell was only preparing to confront “antifa” on January 6.
“Evidence that Caldwell intended to commit violence against these particular employees is directly relevant to that criminal objective and flatly contradicts Caldwell’s conjured impression that his attention and actions were narrowly tailored to rally attendance and self-defense against ‘antifa’ individuals unrelated to the election process,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in their motion.
However, Mehta did not agree that the list was relevant to the case, “at most what [the death list] shows is Mr. Caldwell maybe, maybe at most that he had some thinking about violence,” he stated on Thursday.
Caldwell, along with his co-defendants Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes have pled not guilty to seditious conspiracy. They face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. According to authorities, the group had stockpiled weapons in an Arlington, Virginia, hotel in preparation for the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally organized by former President Trump and his allies.