The prediction by the convicted leader of the Oath Keepers militia, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, that President Trump will be convicted of the same charges that have landed him behind bars for 18 years signals that the drama of January 6 prosecutions could soon, with the help of Special Counsel Jack Smith, be reaching a crescendo.

That prediction, though, carries extra weight because Rhodes, in addition to now being a convicted felon, is also a graduate of prestigious Yale Law School as well as a former clerk at the Arizona Supreme Court. He traced a path from one of America’s top law schools to leader of one of its most notorious far-right militias.  

Now, from behind bars and in solitary confinement, he tells the Washington Times, “They’re going to do the same thing to President Trump that they did to me.” Addressing Mr. Trump directly, he warned, “You’re going to get railroaded. You’re going to be found guilty if you try to go to trial.” He added: “The narrative has been set.”

Rhodes explained, “I didn’t enter the Capitol, but I was still found guilty by a D.C. jury of obstructing an official proceeding even though I didn’t even go inside. And I was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, although they had zero evidence of an actual plan. They just used my speech. It will be the same thing with President Trump.”

Rhodes’s reflections on what could lie ahead for Mr. Trump surface the tangled relationship between Mr. Trump and those who have been convicted for acting to keep him in the White House after his election loss. At trial, the jury heard testimony that Rhodes attempted to pass a message to “save the republic” to Mr. Trump through an unnamed intermediary, who instead took it to the FBI.

At that trial, Rhodes’s attorneys, James Lee Bright and Philip Linder, argued that their client was engaged in preparations for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy military force to quell domestic unrest. Mr. Bright acknowledged this as “an incredibly complicated theory of defense” that has never “played out in this fashion in American jurisprudence.” Messrs. Bright and Linder could not be reached for comment.    

The seditious conspiracy statute that looms over Mr. Trump and under which Rhodes was convicted applies when “two or more persons” who “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war” or act “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

Rhodes’s gloss on the crime underscores the pliability of conspiracy statutes, which require an agreement to commit a crime and then an overt act to further it. Rhodes would have learned that in his first-year course in criminal law. Once prosecutors convinced a jury of the existence of a conspiracy, it was not necessary for Rhodes to be at the Capitol, or anywhere near it.

At Rhodes’s sentencing — the statute calls for 20 years, prosecutors demanded 15, and he received those 18 — the presiding judge, Amit Mehta, asserted the existence of a “series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another.”

In order for Mr. Smith to move against Mr. Trump, he will have to trust he can convince another jury that much the same words apply to the former president. Helping prosecutors’ case against Rhodes was their showing that in the days before January 6, 2021, he spent $20,000 to purchase firearms and tactical gear. One witness told the jury that he indicated “lethal force” could be necessary. 

The Democratic-controlled House January 6 committee, apparently not content with charging Mr. Trump with seditious conspiracy — what a law professor, Laurence Tribe, calls “treason’s sibling” — recommended, among other charges, incitement to insurrection, which carries a lifetime ban from holding office. The Department of Justice has not not yet charged anyone with insurrection in respect of January 6.   

Thus far, though, Mr. Smith appears more focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election via legal stratagem — particularly the push to apply pressure to elected officials like Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, and the scheme to put forward alternative electors — than his involvement in the riot at the Capitol. 

The special counsel’s recent colloquy with Mayor Giuliani, who was allegedly involved in those efforts in Georgia, occurred under the aegis of a “proffer agreement,” whereby a witness provides information to prosecutors, who in turn promise not to use it against the witness in potential criminal proceedings unless they find that the witness lied. 

Mr. Smith appears open for business when it comes to trading testimony for immunity. CNN reports that two men who served as alternate electors, the chairman of the Republican Party in Nevada, Michael McDonald, and another Republican official, James DeGraffenreid, have both been offered some manner of protection from prosecution in exchange for their cooperation. 

Mr. Trump took to Truth Social on July 4 to decry “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden.” He opined that the special counsel “should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest.”