Roberto Minuta

Reared in Upstate New York, Roberto graduated from a prestigious high school in Newburgh, New York, just up the Hudson River Valley from New York City. In 2020, the 37-year-old opened a tattoo shop that quickly became popular. But he was ordered to shut it down soon after due to Covid restrictions.  Roberto, wanting to feed his family and pay the rent, refused to close deliberately breaching COVID-19 public health protocols. At the end of May, he even organized a rally to protest against these mandates.  Hundreds of small business owners came out.  As you can imagine, it did not sit well with the New York state authorities.  Now, he was on their radar.

This incident swayed him towards these new patriot groups. “We were there as a force of good,” Roberto says, “I was with the Oath Keepers, and we’ve always done positive work, disaster relief, protecting businesses aiding people that need help. We have no history of violence and no intention of violence. We are strictly there to protect the First Amendment because we can’t have one side that’s permitted to have free speech and the other that’s not. That’s not America. That’s not what this country was founded on and when that’s gone my children’s future looks grim.”Roberto was so displeased with how he was treated in New York, he and his wife Gissela, alongwith their two young children, packed up and moved to Texas in a small town in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.

Then came the rallies on January 6^th, the infamous day when congress was set to certify the electoral college votes.  When Roberto left to attended the rallies, he went with the intention of protecting Roger Stone, the much-maligned unofficial advisor to President Trump.  Stonewas scheduled to speak at two events during the rallies.  Mr. Stone had received death threats from elements of the leftist anarchists, in particular, Antifa.  The Oath Keepers were respected among regular citizens but also, not afraid to use muscle to push back on people like the Antifa, BLM crowd.  However,as with any organization, the Oath Keepers hada few bad actors who tainted the entire group.

Roberto and some fellow Oath Keepers showed up, did their job with Stoneand had access to golf carts to get around the capital area.  When they heard of the large crowds heading into the capital they followed, wanting to help maintain the peace.  It did not work out that way.

Roberto said that he and his friend James were interacting with police and some others in the crowd outside the Capital. While talking to a man he believed to be a Capitol Police Officer—dressed in plain clothes while standing beside a man dressed in combat garb, Roberto asked what they were doing, and he said, “We’re trying to get our guys out. You can have this area.”  Roberto replied, ‘We’re with you if you’re with us,’ and they follow him through the Capitol doors and the doors that they held open.”   Roberto went on to paint a much different picture than the main-stream-media. “The building was opened, and people were coming in and out for the better part of an hour like it was a museum.  Once inside, I saw officers stuck inside the rotunda. I propped myself against the rotunda door, keeping it open, and yelled “Get these cops out of here, LET THEM OUT!”. People began to exit, but one officer struck someone in the face and neck area and everything instantly descended into chaos. I was swept into the rotunda for a matter of seconds. I forced my way out, exited the Capitol after a grand total of 4 min 30 sec in the building.”

At that point, all he wanted to do was get out. He managed to leave the capital building with out any physical contact with law enforcement personal.  He left soon after and returned to Texas.  Back home, Roberto deleted his Facebook page and got a new phone, thinking that somehow, the government would find a way to incriminate him due to his association with The Oath Keepers.  He acknowledges that there some violent players among their members but he never lashed out, took a swing at an officer, and never would.  That did not matter.  Dressed in miliary looking gear at the capital and being inside the building was enough, and something the prosecution tried to use on several occasions.

He was arrested on March 8, 2021 at this home by several masked and armored FBI troopers with Gestapo like tactics. His wife explains,“They wouldn’t let me leave or the children leave,” Gissela recalled. “They wouldn’t let me be alone with my children. They were crying hysterically. They escorted the kids out and had a woman FBI agent sit with my kids, interviewing them, looking through their rooms, their toys, our closets. You would have thought we had done this horrific thing when we know all their father did that day was helping law enforcement. He was just trying to help. He didn’t go with the intention of protesting anything that day. He was there trying to help.”

At trial in January of 2023, prosecution tried to pin an extraallegation of being part of a conspiracy plot on him. However, the FBI found no evidence that the breach of the Capitol was a coordinated attack and the judge would not allow it. For that, Roberto and Gisselaare grateful. He could have been locked up for close to two decades had he been found guilty.

With an activist judge, appointed by Obama and an overtly tainted jury pool in D.C., Roberto never stood your chance.  Before giving Robertothe stiff sentence, Judge Mehta said he recognized that Roberto fought to keep his business open in light of Covid restrictions, and those were an “act of civil disobedience,” and he virtually applauded him.  But the judge went on to say, “however, the one line that can’t be crossed is to use violence about that very government.Cloaking yourself in this tradition of the founders and a violent uprising and believing that the Second Amendment allows individual citizens to gather up arms to battle their government? The law doesn’t permit that!”

Apparently, he’s never actually read the writings of the founding fathers who in fact considered the idea that a sprawling federal government with unlimited powers might one day come to what it is today.  And with that, the citizens had the right to dismantle it – and start over.Roberto was tried and found guilty on all charges includingconspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding (this is from a financial crimes law and is currently before the Supreme Court.  The DOJ uses it so they can slap a felony charge onto to J6rs and maximize their sentence) and aiding and abetting, and conspiracy to prevent a member of Congress from discharging their official duties and worst of all, seditious conspiracy.  He was sentenced June 1, 2022to 54 months in a Federal Penitentiary.Since the trial, Roberto has disavowed The Oath Keepers due to the actions of its founder.