[9][6][7][10] After attending community college,[8] Rhodes switched to studying political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, while parking cars to make money.

[7] Rhodes taught a self-defense class,[7] and his research paper about enemy combatants' classification during the presidency of George W. Bush won an award in his final year at Yale.

[11] Under his leadership in 2013, the Oath Keepers instructed its members to form "Citizen Preservation" teams, which included militias, to operate in communities across the U.S. meant to defend citizens against the government intentionally letting the country descend into chaos and then declaring martial law and scrapping the constitution, stating that "They are preparing to control and contain us, and to shoot us, but not preparing to feed us.

[21] Rhodes is reported to have taken inspiration from the notion that Adolf Hitler could have been stopped if German soldiers and police had refused to follow orders.

[6] For two months after the 2020 United States presidential election, Rhodes encouraged his supporters to reject Joe Biden as the incoming president.

[23] Rhodes spoke of a need to take up weapons to prevent Biden's inauguration and launched a campaign to persuade then-President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy the military and the Oath Keepers as a militia.

"[24] On December 12, 2020, Rhodes spoke at a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., along with speakers including Michael Flynn, Sebastian Gorka, Alex Jones, podcaster David Harris Jr., Nick Fuentes, and Mike Lindell.

[29] On January 6, 2021, Rhodes entered "restricted Capitol grounds", where he directed Oath Keepers members via telephone and text, telling them which positions to take around the building.

[32] On November 29, 2022, after a nine-week trial, along with Kelly Meggs, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering regarding the January 6, 2021, United States Capitol attack.

[13] Dakota Adams has said that his father was abusive to him, his mother, and his siblings; he stated that Rhodes has sabotaged his children's homeschooling and that the family "lived in extreme isolation in one particular cultural bubble in increasingly paranoid and militant right-wing political spheres everywhere we moved in the country until eventually we ended up in Montana.

"[49] Rhodes required them to line up with their backs to him at ATMs and gas pumps to look for assassins and unload groceries from the family vehicle one-armed to have hands free in case of attack.

[51] The children suffered severe medical neglect and were illiterate, and Dakota only learned his multiplication tables at age 19 so that he could pass his high school equivalency test.