FBI Monitored Truck Parked At SeaTac Airport Loaded With Assault Rifle & Ammo Boxes In 2020

On July 5, 2020, the Port of Seattle Police Department inventoried a black Ford F-150 pickup truck with a black camper shell parked in space 2M49 at the SeaTac airport garage. The truck was unlocked, missing its rear license plate and full of gun cases, ammo boxes and at least one short-barrel assault rifle.

From outside the truck, POSPD could see a sealed box labeled PMAG D-50 (a 50-round drum magazine for 7.62/.308 ammo), a box of MAGPUL magazines, a short-barrel assault rifle, a Pulsar thermal imaging rifle scope box, two long-rifle cases, one hand-gun case, an AR-15 upper receiver, a box of 7.62 Aguila ammunition, another ammunition box, and various other suitcases and duffle bags inside.

POSPD could also see "a Delta Airlines bag tag visible on the driver's side floorboard with the name Stewart Elmer Rhodes on it. The tag was from a [Delta] flight from Missoula, MT to Seattle in January 2020," according to an email obtained by HardPressed.

Rhodes is the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison on charges of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering following his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. In January 2025, President Donald Trump commuted Rhodes' sentence following his inauguration and Rhodes was released from federal prison the next day.

However, the truck parked at SeaTac airport wasn't owned by Rhodes. It was owned by another man serving a federal prison sentence on weapons violations including possession of a machine gun, short-barreled assault rifle, dynamite, and a grenade.

After the truck was discovered at SeaTac, a member of the FBI Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force wrote in an August 7, 2020, email that "Rhodes may have traveled to Seattle to get involved with CHAZ/CHOP but as that fizzled out, may not have actually led his followers here. It is believed that either Rhodes abandoned the vehicle (likely based on the condition he left it) or was traveling out of [SeaTac] to an unknown destination." Later that day, the same JTTF officer wrote that "Rhodes has confirmed that he parked the vehicle at SeaTac and flew out back in February (either not truthful or the truck missed the inventory). Rhodes stated that he has been traveling ever since, but intends to get back and pick it up in the near future. He could not or would not confirm whether or not there are any weapons inside the vehicle."

HardPressed has not seen any evidence that Rhodes planned to travel to Seattle's Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). He did not respond to a request for an interview.

At the time, the Washington State Fusion Center was looking at "an increase in online hate speech and aspirational plans intended to incite violence and/or use the ongoing CHOP situation as an excuse to inflict hate," according to a WSFC bulletin obtained by HardPressed. "Social media reports indicate a potential counter-group assembling and establishing a presence to impact the CHOP area. An 'American Patriot's Retake the Seattle Occupation Zone for America' event is scheduled for July 4, 2020."

President Trump also threatened to take back the CHOP if Mayor Durkan didn't shut it down. "If they don't do the job, we will do the job," Trump said. Asked by a journalist what he would do, Trump replied, "about ten different things, any one of which will solve the problem quickly."

On June 30, 2020, the FBI Seattle JTTF was also made aware of a man who was driving across the country in a Ford F-550 bus thought to be carrying "at least 10 high powered scoped rifles, shotguns, and a large amount of ammunition," according to a report authored by the Grand County Sheriff's Office in Colorado. The report said the man's "intention was to head towards the Seattle, WA area to meet up with similar minded friends and, 'take the country back.'"

In the early morning hours of July 1 2020, after infiltrating CHOP with informants, the FBI and Seattle Police Department raided the protest zone and took back control of the department's East Precinct. While Proud Boys did stomp through the CHOP, a full-on heavily armed right-wing militia invasion of the gayborhood never materialized.