WASHINGTON — An Arizona Oath Keeper accused of coordinating an armed backup team outside of D.C. on January 6 will await trial behind bars following a magistrate judge’s order Thursday.
Ed Vallejo, 63, of Phoenix, was one of 11 Oath Keepers – including president Stewart Rhodes – indicted on charges of seditious conspiracy last week. Vellejo appeared before Magistrate Judge John Boyle in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Thursday to make the case that he should be granted bond.
Vallejo’s attorney told Boyle her client was a 63-year-old man with asthma who has been free without incident for the past year before a federal grand jury indicted him earlier this month. She also noted his service in the U.S. Army, from which he received a medical discharge.
Prosecutors, however, said Vallejo was one of two Oath Keepers tasked with preparing the militia’s “quick reaction force,” which was staged with weapons, ammunition and equipment at the Ballston Comfort Inn just across the river from D.C. on January 6.
In the federal indictment against him, prosecutors said during the riot, Vallejo sent a message to the Oath Keepers’ leadership chat letting them he had two trucks outfitted and ready to go.
“Let me know how I can assist,” he allegedly wrote.
Prosecutors said Vallejo also expressed his interested in continuing the fight event after the National Guard had been called in to reassert control at the U.S. Capitol Building.
“We’ll be back to 6 a.m. to do it again,” Vallejo wrote in the Oath Keepers’ chat. “We got food for 30 days. We have only [begun] to fight.”
On January 7, Vallejo told the group he was going out for “recon.”
“We are going to probe their defense line right now,” he said.
Boyle said he took the defense’s arguments about Vallejo’s medical situation seriously, but that he saw no evidence of remorse from Vallejo at any point between the Capitol riot and the hearing. He also said he believed Vallejo only stayed in Virginia because he never got the call.
“I think if Mr. Rhodes had given that order, you would have complied,” Boyle said.
Boyle said he didn’t see Vallejo as a flight risk, and that he had considered GPS monitoring, but decided it wasn’t sufficient for Vallejo.
“I don’t think anybody – at your age of 63, with such strong beliefs as you have – can stop you from acting on them one way or another,” he said.
With that, Boyle ordered Vallejo held in custody while he awaits trial. He will be transported to the D.C. Jail, where the majority of other January 6 defendants in pretrial detention, including other Oath Keepers, are being held.
A pretrial detention hearing for the militia’s president, Rhodes, was scheduled for Monday in the Eastern District of Texas.
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