Audio of Oath Keepers’ Leader Saying He Regretted Not Bringing Guns on Jan. 6 Played at Sedition Trial: Could’ve ‘Fixed it Right Then and There’

Federal prosecutors dropped a bombshell on Monday while presenting their opening statements in the sedition trial of Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes over his participation and planning of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol: audio recordings of the defendant that had not been previously heard by the public.

Rhodes was recorded in the days after the attack saying his “only regret” was that the group “should have brought rifles” to the Capitol that day, prosecutors revealed in their opening statement.

Rhodes is on trial alongside Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Thomas Caldwell for charges of seditious conspiracy – the first Jan. 6 defendants to be brought up on such charges.

NBC’s Ryan J. Reilly joined MSNBC from outside the courthouse on Monday and explained how and why Rhodes’s defense attorneys are centering their arguments around former President Donald Trump’s alleged calls for Rhodes to stop the certification of the 2020 election that day.

“Yeah, Donald Trump is really looming over this entire trial. And essentially what Stewart Rhodes, his lawyers are going to argue is that all of this he believed, Stewart Rhodes believed was in some ways legal because he was waiting on an order essentially from Donald Trump to take any action,” Reilly explained.

“We’re going to hear from one of the defendants who has already pleaded guilty previously about this alleged phone call on the night of January 6th, in which Stewart Rhodes was trying to reach Donald Trump directly. He was talking to some sort of Trump intermediary,” Reilly continued, adding:

I thought what was really compelling about the opening arguments from the government today was that they revealed this new audio. We’ve seen a lot of text messages from the last year, but they trotted out this new audio that was recorded a few days after January 6th that featured Stewart Rhodes.

Reilly then described the audio which included Rhodes saying, “My only regret is that they should have brought rifles” and arguing that if his group had been armed that day they could’ve “fixed it right then and there” – referring to keeping Trump in power.

Prosecutors also cited texts from Rhodes in the days after the attack on the Capitol in which he urged his followers to delete their communications with each other. “You all need to delete any of your comments regarding who did what,” Rhodes wrote in an Oath Keepers group chat on Jan. 8.

“Do not chat about Oath Keeper members allegedly doing anything at Capitol,” Rhodes added. “Go dark on that. Do not discuss… Let me put it in infantry speak: SHUT THE F–K UP.”