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Another key aspect of the trial will be the Oath Keeper’s relationship to Mr. Trump, a man they often supported as president despite their traditional antigovernment beliefs.

In his own opening statement, Phillip Linder, Mr. Rhodes’s lawyer, said that Mr. Rhodes and his subordinates had never planned an illegal attack against the government on Jan. 6. Instead, Mr. Linder said, the Oath Keepers were waiting for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move, they claim, would have given the group standing as a militia to employ force of arms in support of Mr. Trump.

Calling the Oath Keepers a “peacekeeping force,” Mr. Linder also argued that the group did not go to Washington on Jan. 6 to storm the Capitol but instead to provide security for speakers and dignitaries at political rallies that week.

“Even though it may look inflammatory,” Mr. Linder told the jury, “they did nothing illegal.”

Because of the nature of the Oath Keepers’ defense — and because of the government’s wealth of evidence — the trial is less likely to focus on disputes over what the group did in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6 and more likely to hinge on the question of why they did it.

The government contends that Mr. Rhodes and his four co-defendants — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — willingly planned to use force against the government and carried out their attack even though Mr. Trump never did invoke the Insurrection Act.

The defense maintains that the Oath Keepers could not have seditiously sought to stop the transfer of power because they believed that the Insurrection Act would allow them to legally come to Mr. Trump’s aid.

While the seditious conspiracy statute generally bars plots to overthrow the government, Mr. Rhodes and co-defendants have been accused of using force to block the execution of federal law — in this case, the 12th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, both of which govern the transfer of presidential power.