Background: Kellye SoRelle, former general counsel for the Oath Keepers, leaves federal court in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024 (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein). Inset: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes (Collin County (Tex.) Jail).
The Texas woman who once served as the lawyer for the extremist Oath Keepers group is headed for federal prison for actions she took during and after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Kellye SoRelle, 46, was sentenced to 12 months behind bars on Friday. She pleaded guilty in August to felony obstruction of justice and misdemeanor trespassing in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which supporters of Donald Trump violently breached the Capitol building as Congress was set to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
According to prosecutors, SoRelle, along with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, entered restricted Capitol grounds at around 2:12 p.m., just as the initial violent breach of the Capitol building was underway.
“As she entered the restricted area, SoRelle live-streamed a video to Facebook, expressing her support for the actions of the rioters and urging others not to be afraid,” the DOJ said in a statement. “She described the scene as one of the ‘coolest damn things’ she had ever witnessed and framed the riot as a necessary step to prevent the United States from descending into communism and tyranny. SoRelle continued to document the riot over Facebook live-stream as she moved around the Capitol building with Rhodes and the other Oath Keeper affiliate.”
Prior to that, at around 1:30 p.m., SoRelle had messaged an Oath Keepers group that called itself the “Leadership intel sharing secured” group, saying: “We are acting like the founding fathers — can’t stand down. Per Stewart, and I concur.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who also oversaw the case against Rhodes — with whom SoRelle was romantically involved at the time of the Jan. 6 attack — told SoRelle that her offenses were indeed grave.
“What you were trying to cover up, and what you were encouraging others to cover up, is among the most serious conduct Americans can engage in,” Mehta told SoRelle at Friday’s sentencing, according to local CBS affiliate WUSA reporter Jordan Fischer. “Sedition.”
Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, also reportedly told SoRelle that her actions “shocked the conscience,” considering that she was a lawyer who used her status to promote Rhodes’ increasingly violent rhetoric, and that the consequences of her actions reached well beyond her.
“People listened,” Mehta said, according to WUSA. “People listened. And there are people sitting in jail today because of that. Whose lives have been ruined.”
Rhodes was convicted in November 2022 of seditious conspiracy and ultimately sentenced by Mehta to 18 years behind bars. SoRelle had announced in January 2022 that she was the acting head of the militia-style group after Rhodes’ arrest earlier that month.
On Jan. 6, after the violence at the Capitol had ebbed, SoRelle and Rhodes joined other Oath Keepers members for what prosecutors described as a “celebratory dinner.” However, that dinner was apparently cut short when that group “received word that law enforcement was either arresting or searching for individuals involved in the Capitol attack,” prosecutors said. SoRelle and the others left the restaurant and retrieved their things from their hotel before regrouping at a nearby gas station.
At that point, Rhodes turned off his cellphone, apparently afraid of being tracked by law enforcement, and gave it to SoRelle, who took it. SoRelle then conveyed messages on the messaging app Signal to Oath Keepers members and affiliates on behalf of Rhodes using her own phone. She urged Oath Keepers members to scrub their devices of evidence that they participated in the deadly riot, which resulted in multiple deaths and force lawmakers and staff to either flee the Capitol or shelter in place for several harrowing hours.
“Please delete any information you’ve posted regarding the DC op and your involvement,” SoRelle wrote to the group in the days after Jan. 6 “This thread will be deleted when possible.”
She also relayed instructions from Rhodes, who had turned off his phone to avoid being tracked, to “clean up all your chats,” prosecutors say.
“YOU ALL NEED TO DELETE ANY OF YOUR COMMENTS ABOUT WHO DID WHAT,” she also wrote, explaining that only the comment authors could delete their posts. According to the Justice Department, members of the Oath Keepers “complied” with these instructions, “deleting messages, photographs, and videos from their devices that could serve as evidence of their participation in the Capitol attack.”
Mehta also sentenced SoRelle to 36 months of supervised release and ordered her to pay $2,000 in restitution toward the estimated $2.8 million in damage and losses to the Capitol. His sentence is closer to the government’s request of 16 months behind bars than to SoRelle’s own request to be sentenced to time served plus probation, court records show.
In addition to the obstruction of justice charge, SoRelle was also originally charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding, a widely-used charge that the Supreme Court ruled in June 2024 was wrongly applied to accused Jan. 6 rioters.
As Law&Crime has previously reported, Mehta deemed SoRelle mentally incompetent to stand trial in June 2023 following her September 2022 arrest. She was restored to competency in February 2024.
