National

Former Texas Republican House Candidate Arrested In Connection With Jan. 6

Former Republican candidate for the U.S. House, Kellye SoRelle, was arrested Thursday in Junction, Texas and charged with obstructing the certification of the 2020 election and tampering with evidence in the Justice Department’s investigation of the Capitol attack. She will make an initial appearance before a federal judge in Austin Thursday afternoon, according to the Washington Post.

Ms. SoRelle, 43, is a lawyer for the Oath Keepers militia and was present at the U.S. Capitol along with the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes. She was charged in a Federal District Court in Washington with conspiring to obstruct a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 as lawmakers were attempting to certify the results of the 2020 election.

The indictment also accuses Ms. SoRelle of tampering with evidence connected to the Justice Department’s grand jury investigation of Jan. 6 and illegally entering and remaining in a restricted area of the Capitol grounds.

Ms. SoRelle ran unsuccessfully for election to the Texas House of Representatives to represent District 60. She lost in the Republican primary on March 3, 2020 to Glenn Rogers.

A federal magistrate judge in Texas asserted in an order last January that Ms. SoRelle was in a romantic relationship with the group’s leader, Mr. Rhodes, which she has denied.

There is no evidence that Ms. SoRelle entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. However, she participated in video conferences with Oath Keepers in the weeks before Jan. 6. and was with Mr. Rhodes outside the Capitol as other Oath Keepers invaded the building.

The indictment alleges that SoRelle “did knowingly combine, conspire, Confederate, and agree with other persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, that is, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote.”

She is also accused of aiding and abetting others to do the same and of persuading others to withhold or destroy records. Ms. SoRelle was not charged with seditious conspiracy, unlike Mr. Rhodes and several other members of the Oath Keepers.

The possibility of charges had not dissuaded SoRelle, who calls herself a “patriot” in her twitter profile, from posting on social media. Earlier this week, SoRelle tweeted QAnon-style conspiracy theories; “Dear government, those within multiple agencies are all trying to destroy you. Every side, you are surrounded by our enemies. We need you to fight for us, not against us.”

Nick Anderson

Writer, editor, photographer and editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson has joined the Reform Austin newsroom, where he will employ the artistic skill and political insights that earned a Pulitzer Prize to drive coverage of Texas government. As managing editor, Anderson is responsible for guiding Reform Austin’s efforts to give readers the unfiltered facts they need to hold Texas leaders accountable. Anderson’s original cartoons will be a regular feature on RA News. “Reform Austin readers understand the consequences of electing politicians who use ideological agendas to divide us, when they should be doing the hard work necessary to make our state government work for everyone,” Anderson said. “As a veteran journalist, I’m excited about Reform Austin’s potential to re-focus conversations on the issues that matter to common-sense Texans – like protecting our neighborhoods from increasingly common disasters, healthcare, just to name a few.” Anderson worked for the Houston Chronicle, the largest newspaper in Texas, from 2006 until 2017. In addition to the Pulitzer, Anderson earned the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award. He’s also a two-time winner of Columbia College’s Fischetti Award, and the National Press Foundation’s Berryman Award. Anderson’s cartoons have been published in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and other papers. In 2005, Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning while working for the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. The judges complimented his “unusual graphic style that produced extraordinarily thoughtful and powerful messages.”