12 May 29 , 2022
most anticipated trials in years. He faces five felony counts; in
addition to sedition, they include conspiracy to obstruct an
official proceeding. The sedition charge carries a possible
sentence of 20 years in prison.
From the beginning, Tom has pleaded not guilty. His defense
argues that he is not an official member of the Oath Keepers, did
not plan to storm the building or enter a restricted area and —
although his language is admittedly bombastic — did not commit
a crime. The Caldwells declined an in-person or phone interview,
but in a statement relayed through his attorney, Tom said: “The
DOJ [Department of Justice] has reviewed more than one
million text, Facebook, Signal, and social media communications
and has not found one iota of proof that myself, my co-defen-
dants, or any human being had a pre-plan to breach the Capitol
Building on January 6th or commit any specific act of violence.”
O
n the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Thomas Caldwell and his wife,
Sharon, woke up in a hotel room in Arlington, just outside the
nation’s capital. The couple from rural Clarke County, Va.,
traveled with several members of the Oath Keepers extremist
group into Washington, D.C., to protest the results of the
presidential election, which they believed had been stolen.
Tom, a tall 66-year-old retired Navy intelligence officer with a
curved mustache, wore a Washington football cap and carried a
large American flag. Sharon, a petite blonde, sported a crimson
Trump pompom hat and a flag bandanna.
The Caldwells attended President Donald Trump’s rally
outside the White House and moved with the crowd to the U.S.
Capitol grounds around 12:45 p.m. What happened after that is
contested. At least four of the people in their original party —
including Jessica Watkins and Donovan Crowl from the Ohio
Oath Keepers — appear in videos wearing a uniform of vests,
helmets and goggles, striding up the east Capitol stairs in a line.
Watkins and Crowl forcibly entered the building around 2:
p.m., sharing a video on social media in which Watkins
proclaims, “We’re in the f---ing Capitol, bro.”
The Caldwells remained outside but advanced up a set of
stairs on the west side of the building to the terraces. “I said,
‘Well, if everybody’s doing it, since nobody’s saying don’t do it,
maybe we should go,’ ” Tom told the podcast “The Political
Prisoner,” which focuses on defending Jan. 6 rioters, this past
April. According to court filings, after the building was breached,
Tom sent text and social media messages such as “Us storming
the castle. Please share... I am such an instigator” and “If we’d
had guns I guarantee we would have killed 100 politicians. They
ran off and were spirited away through their underground
tunnels like the rats they were.” Afterward, Tom and Sharon
drove some 90 miles west to their farm in the Shenandoah
Valley, leaving the day’s chaos behind them.
On a chilly morning 13 days later, FBI officials and police
banged on the door of the Caldwells’ house with an arrest
warrant. They questioned Tom about his role in planning an
insurrection to impede the presidential vote certification on
behalf of the Oath Keepers, and arrested him. Later in January
he was indicted on several counts. Then early this year, he was
charged along with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes with
seditious conspiracy — the most serious accusation leveled
against the Jan. 6 participants — for his role in allegedly
organizing weapons to be stashed and possibly deployed from
the same Comfort Inn where he and Sharon had stayed.
In September, Tom is scheduled to appear alongside four
other Oath Keepers affiliates, including Rhodes, in one of the
