HELENA - Trial dates have been set for three Jan. 6 Capitol Riot cases with Montana ties, including two Dillon men and the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes.
This month a federal judge set a trial date of May 15, 2023, for Isaac Sturgeon of Dillon. He is accused of assaulting police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Prosecutors allege in court documents that Sturgeon was seen on an officer's body-worn camera on January 6 and was part of a group that picked up a metal barricade and shoved it into a group of D.C. Metropolitan Police officers.
Sturgeon, along with his co-defendants Craig Bingert and Taylor Johnatakis, has been indicted on more than a half dozen charges, including obstruction of justice; assaulting, resisting or impeding officers; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building and an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds.
The Dillon man was arrested on March 6, 2021, at JKF Airport in New York after being ordered to return from Kenya. , Witnesses told investigators at the time that Sturgeon travels frequently.
The most high-profile Jan. 6 case is that of Stewart Rhodes, who will go to trial on September 26.
Rhodes, along with several other members of Oath Keepers, has been accused of committing seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He had been a practicing lawyer in Montana before his disbarment in 2015. In the years following his disbarment, Rhodes relocated to Texas.
The third Montana-related Jan. 6 case to go to trial is that of Dillon business owner Hank Muntzer. A trial date of Aug. 30, 2022, had been set for Muntzer, but that has been pushed back to Feb. 6, 2023.
A grand jury brought five charges against Muntzer last year, one felony and four misdemeanors.
So far, four Montanans have pleaded guilty or are expected to plead guilty to charges related to Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
