WASHINGTON — A Texas woman who served as the former general counsel of the Oath Keepers will enter into a plea deal for her role in the Capitol riot later this month, according to a court filing by her attorney on Monday.
In the motion, Kellye Sorelle asks for the U.S. Marshal’s Service to cover transportation and subsistence expenses for her trip to D.C. July 17 to enter a guilty plea. Federal law allows a judge to order the Marshals to cover such expenses for indigent defendants. The motion was filed by SoRelle’s attorney, Horatio Aldridge, and was not opposed by the government.
The motion does not identify which of the four charges in SoRelle’s indictment she intends to plead guilty to, however two of them relate to a federal obstruction statute whose use in Jan. 6 cases was narrowed last month in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The remaining two counts are for allegedly entering and remaining in a restricted grounds and attempting to corruptly persuade others to withhold, alter, destroy or mutilate evidence to impair its use in a grand jury investigation.
SoRelle, an attorney and former Republican candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, was one of approximately two dozen people with links to the Oath Keepers militia charged as part of the government’s largest Capitol riot case to date. She previously served as general counsel for the Oath Keepers, as well as counsel for Latinos for Trump. SoRelle was with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 but did not enter the building.
At the trial of Rhodes and other members of the militia in late 2022, prosecutors said SoRelle passed messages from Rhodes to the rest of the group telling them to “GET BUSY” deleting comments on their chats that could incriminate them or others.
SoRelle had been scheduled to go to trial herself last year with two other defendants, Donovan Crowl and James Beeks, but her appearance was derailed after separate evaluators hired by both her attorney and federal prosecutors determined she was not competent to stand trial. Last June, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered SoRelle, who had been on pretrial release until that point, into the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for competency restoration. The BOP informed the court SoRelle had been returned to competency in February, and U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta formally entered a finding that she’d been restored earlier this month.
Prior to Monday’s filing, SoRelle had been scheduled to begin trial on Nov. 12. A status hearing had been set for July 10.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges for plotting to forcibly oppose the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election and sentenced in May 2023 to 18 years in prison. According to the BOP, his expected release date was Jan. 28, 2037.