IN THE DAYS before his arrest, Stewart Rhodes could feel the authorities circling. He met me on a chilly Dallas evening in January in a room I'd booked at a chain hotel not far from where he lived, the neon lights of office parks and strip malls glowing outside. He wore dark jeans and a flannel shirt patterned in yellow and black, the colors of the Oath Keepers, one of the largest militant groups in the country, which Rhodes, 56, created in 2009 and has led since. He looked at me steadily with his right eye through a pair of glasses; his left eye, shot out in a handgun accident three decades before, was covered with a black patch. The Yale Law graduate normally relished the chance to spar with an interviewer, but on this night, he seemed a bit hollowed out. I asked if the prospect of prison was weighing on him. "I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of feeling like they're getting to me," he said.

The one-year anniversary of January 6 was approaching. That was the day Rhodes, spurred by Donald Trump's claims of a stolen election, had led his members to the U.S. Capitol, warning of the potential for civil war and hoping that the then-president would act to stop the transfer of power. Perhaps he'd even call for assistance from Rhodes himself, along with other members of the wider militant movement that Rhodes had spent so many years helping to grow, shape, and drive closer to the new conservative mainstream. Instead, Trump had given a speech to propel the "Stop the Steal" masses toward the Capitol, then returned to the White House to watch events unfold on TV, while Rhodes had stood amid the crowd outside the Capitol in a black cowboy hat as two columns of his members pushed in with the rioters. Seventeen people with alleged links to the Oath Keepers had since been arrested, and Rhodes had spent the year as "Person One" in the sprawling FBI investigation into what happened that day.