The far-right militia boss’ descent into violence and madness was a long time coming, his ex-wife tells The Daily Beast. Tasha Adams’ husband called her in a panic. It was December 1998, just six months after they moved from Las Vegas to outside the D.C. Beltway so that her husband could take a job answering donor mail for Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican from Texas. Adams says her husband told her he needed “to delete his porn history before the IT guy came in.” He snuck Adams into Paul’s congressional office as she held their 1-year-old son, “waddling because I was eight months pregnant.” She deleted his porn history, “line by line, hundreds of sites”—even though server logs would have retained a record of any X-rated surfing. Shortly after the cleanup operation, Adams’ husband left his job with no explanation. “It was so quick,” she says. It was shocking, chaotic, self-destructive behavior—and an episode emblematic of life with her now ex-husband, Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia. Rhodes is currently on trial on charges of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Facing a potential 20-year sentence, he is accused by the government of being a ringleader in the attempt to stop the legal transfer of power to President Joe Biden. James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, told the Associated Press the defense will be centered on Trump. They will argue Rhodes’ actions on Jan. 6 were fully legal, amounting to “actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize” the Insurrection Act. Adams, however, claims Rhodes’ alleged attempt to overthrow the government was motivated by hopes of being pardoned by Trump for his past misdeeds as head of the Oath Keepers.
via daily beast: How Oath Keepers Leader Stewart Rhodes Became a ‘Brownshirt for Trump’