Today, Explained - So I elected an Oath Keeper

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Extremists in the right-wing militant organization known as the Oath Keepers are present in law enforcement and in the military. Now, thanks to reporting from ProPublica’s Isaac Arnsdorf, we know they’re in the government, too. Today’s show was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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One of the really haunting images from January 6th was this column of people snaking their way up the Capitol steps wearing helmets and camo and flak vests and, you know, looking like there was some kind of organized military style operation going on. And the people in that image, those were the Oath Keepers. A number of them have now been charged in a conspiracy to coordinate an attack on the Capitol. The far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers, appeared in federal court. They faced charges of conspiracy and breaching the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection. Where are the fucking traitors?

Drag them out by the fucking hat! Yeah! Where are the fucking traitors? Come on, who's first? We don't want war. We want to prepare to fight for our liberty. The Oath Keepers have really evolved from a militia-style organization into a political force within the Republican Party mainstream, now with

members who are not participating in weapons drills or boot camps, but are actually serving in public office. Isaac Arnsdorf, you've been reporting on the Oath Keepers for ProPublica. How did this group get started? The Oath Keepers started in 2009 by a guy named Stuart Rhodes. It is a fact, a sad fact, that most politicians and most lawyers, when they raise their right hand to take the oath, they kind of roll their eyes and smirk and just mumble the words because they don't really mean them. Who was an Army paratrooper who then went to Yale Law School.

Yale? Yes. I'm sorry. The Oath Keeper's origins trace back to Yale? Well, the founder was a student there, yes. Many of you have dim views of lawyers, I'm sure. They had their kickoff event, they called it a muster, like the military term, on the Lexington battle green. So the sight of the shot heard around the world from the Revolutionary War.

Good afternoon. Hoorah! Hoorah! Hoorah! I'm Stuart Rhodes, I'm the founder of Oath Keepers. I serve as a boat trooper in the U.S. Army. And the idea of the Oath Keepers was kind of picking up where the 1990s militia movement left off, but wanting to focus specifically on recruiting former law enforcement and military people. I thought about this idea while I was working for Congressman Paul's campaign in Nevada as a volunteer. It did not matter to any of us who was going to become president. We were going to found this organization regardless because we understood the time had come

to remind all of our brothers-at-arms of their obligations and to make sure that they stood firm. So the appeal was that, you know, when you swore an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution as someone in the military or as someone in law enforcement, that even if you're not on active duty anymore, that oath never expired. And being an oath keeper, joining this organization is like the way for you to continue upholding that oath and continue serving. Which on its face doesn't sound nefarious, I guess. Well, exactly. I mean, that's how radicalization usually works, is to kind of draw people in with something that sounds very innocent. You know know you're upholding the

constitution who could argue with that when we say those words it's not just something we say we know that it means we're writing a blank check made out to the people of the united states for an amount up to and including our lives. When a firefighter goes into a burning building, he knows he might not come out, but he's duty bound to do it. But then you start to introduce them to ideas that push that in a more and more extreme direction. So from the starting point of you're just continuing your oath to defend the Constitution, then here are what Oath Keepers actually pledge to do when they join. They pledge that they will refuse to implement unconstitutional orders from the federal government, and they list out 10 of them that they'll refuse to obey. We will not obey any order to disarm the American people. they list out 10 of them that they'll refuse to obey. We will not obey any order to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants. We will not obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

We will not obey any order to force the people to flee. We will not obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for any emergency pretext whatsoever. The things in this list are their right-wing fever dreams, their conspiracy theories that construct a worldview where the federal government is on the brink of tyranny and is going to take everyone's guns away and take everyone's rights away and put people in concentration camps. And so that's how they start pushing people down this path of fear and

extremism and seeing this threat that's so intolerable that it starts to prepare people to think that they can respond with violence in the face of something so unacceptable. How does this group start to pick up steam? So it started off really small, and it became more prominent in the mid-20-teens when Oath Keeper members started showing up at the racial justice protests in Ferguson. InfoWars, I've said before, are here.

They're documenting the activities, and we're here to keep them safe. If you remember, there were a series of standoffs in the western U.S. between ranchers and federal agents, because the ranchers were insisting that they were sovereign citizens. Jim Lordy came from Montana to join the protesters. He says he and other militia members are not afraid to shoot if necessary. Why the gun? Well, they have guns. We need guns to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. And there were Oath Keepers involved in that. And so that is sort of how people started to hear of them.

And they started to grow that way also. So does the group have some sort of central hierarchy? The Justice Department describes it as loosely organized, which is apt. You know, it's really, it's more of an ideology than it is like a regimented organization. And that's how it's important to understand it as distinct from like a militia and more like a political entity.

What was motivating this group in or around 2009? There was an analysis by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 that raised an alarm that right-wing extremists were using the financial crisis and the election of the first black president and fears about gun regulation and things like that to recruit and specifically trying to appeal to military veterans. And this report ended up being leaked and became very controversial with congressional Republicans who kind of made it out to be the Obama administration persecuting conservatives for their belief. There are no Timothy McVeigh's out there right now. Portraying standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than Al Qaeda terrorists.

Naming veterans groups as possible extremist groups. DHS kind of apologized and disbanded the unit that did this. And the message that went out from that basically was, you don't want to mess with right-wing extremism. It's too political. It's a bad look. Just don't go there. And in the decade that followed,

groups like the Oath Keepers were able to hugely expand. And there were some prosecutions of individual Oath Keepers for weapons charges and things like that as isolated incidents. of investment in right-wing extremism that law enforcement made in left-wing extremism and foreign-inspired terrorism until after January 6th. Thinking about January 6th and the kinds of people I saw raging out there at the Capitol, I'm picturing angry white men. I know there are members of the Oath Keepers who happen to be people of color I don't know how predominant they are but but is there a racial dynamic at play within this group as far as you know that's not really their niche in the right-wing extremism universe they are actually they're not marketing themselves as white nationalists

or white supremacists. And the Oath Keepers are actually trying to differentiate themselves from groups that are more along those lines. And their focus is more on government tyranny. How does like the tenor of the Oath Keepers organization change under President Trump? Their rhetoric starts getting very heated in the summer of 2020 around the George Floyd protests and taking it on themselves to help impose, from their perspective, impose law and order where there's rioting and looting going on. And then it escalates from there to embracing Trump's lies about the election being stolen, and then setting up the idea of January 6th as being like a last stand for the country. We have men already stationed outside DC.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally. We will step in and stop it. It's either President

Trump is encouraged and bolstered and strengthened to do what he must do, or we wind up in a bloody fight. We all know that. The fight's coming. What role do the Oath Keepers play in the insurrection? When Trump tweets that he wants to see everyone at January 6th, and it's going to be quote, wild, they take that as a command to show up and deploy. And they start making plans for how they're going to get there and what weapons they can bring and how they're going to store and stash their weapons. And then they're in communication throughout the day as a group of them go into the Capitol and clash with law enforcement. And now we know for a fact that members of the Oath Keepers have been charged in connection with the January 6th insurrection. There's a large group of Oath Keepers that are charged as a group, as a conspiracy.

And then there's a handful of additional people who are charged individually, just as, you know, being people in the mob who also happen to be Oath Keepers. And then I also found three more people who were charged individually and not identified by prosecutors as oath keepers, but as it turns out, were on the membership list.

How does the insurrection change the perception of this group, if it does at all? One way that it changed is that Republican leaders and the Republican Party as a whole really didn't disavow or distance itself or condemn what happened. They developed a counter-narrative based on misinformation about January 6th to minimize or deny the violence and the role of groups like the Oath Keepers in it. So really, it's kind of a legitimizing or a tolerating of the Oath Keepers as part of the movement. It wasn't that long ago where basically no politician would ever want to be associated with a group like the Oath Keepers. And then what we've seen since January 6th is actually a lot of Republican officials who seem to be totally fine with it. And then what we found out is a number of them actually are Oath Keepers themselves. Thank you. to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Isaac, before the break, you were talking about how Republicans didn't disavow this group. They didn't condemn the Oath Keepers. And then in your reporting, you found out that Republicans, in some cases, are Oath Keepers. What did you find out and how? So what happened was the Oath Keepers were hacked back in September. We don't know who the hacker

was, but the hacker gave the files to an organization called Distributed Denial of Secrets, which is a nonprofit that discloses information that they think the public should have. And they shared it with journalists, including us at ProPublica. And one of the things that was in these files was a membership list and more than 35,000 names throughout the whole decade- plus history of the organization.

Is there a membership list because you got to pay dues and subscribe to get your monthly patch or something? Yeah, basically it's $50 for an annual membership or I think $1,000 for a lifetime membership. Do you know what the benefits are? Do you get a discount at the movies? I think for most people, the point was to support this cause that they wanted to identify themselves with. But I do think that there's like a patch or a decal or some kind of merch that goes with it. And there was also a merch store for some amount of time. Love it. So who's in the group? Who's on this list of 35,000 people? Well, first of all, just more people than experts expected. I think analysts and people who follow this thought maybe more in the 10,000 range. And so law enforcement and military veterans, there are a lot of law enforcement and military veterans.

You know, there were hundreds of people who actually signed up using a government or a military email address. So they're certainly well represented. But what I was interested in was looking for people who were involved politically. And one of the ways of doing that was, you know, when people signed up, there was a place for them to kind of write down either why they were joining or what they had to offer the organization, sort of. And I'll read you the entry from a retired NYPD officer who moved upstate, and he wrote, pistol shooting, police street tactics, driving skills, county Republican committee member. So right there, you have kind of,

he's sort of crystallizing his understanding of what this group is all about. It's about the preparation for violence, but it's also about the politics and that he was involved with the Republican Party in his local town. I found 48 people who I could identify either by matching their name to a list of public officials or because of, you know, what they volunteered about themselves when they filled out this form. So I could identify that they were either party officials or elected officials. So 48 out of 35,000 members doesn't seem like, you know, I don't know, like the end of the world. But why did you find that notable all the same? Well, I couldn't check every one of the 35,000.

These were the ones that I was able to find either through a name match or because they basically volunteered about themselves. Like, you know, Hey, I'm, I'm in, I'm into politics. So, you know, this is a, this is a bare minimum bare minimum. But the other thing is that, again, you wouldn't have – that number would have been zero in a world where the major political parties said there's no place for violent extremism in our party. And instead, when I called these folks to ask them about their affiliation, you know, most of them were proud to be identified as Oath Keepers and did not feel they had anything to apologize or account for in terms of being a member of the group that was involved in attacking the Capitol. What are some of the more high-ranking positions you find Oath Keepers holding? So there were 10 state legislators, two in North Carolina, one in Alaska, one in Indiana, one in Georgia.

And then two in Arizona who had actually were already known to be affiliated with the Oath Keepers. There were a bunch more candidates for the state house and an aide to a state legislator. There were former congressional candidates. And then there were people who were, you know, county commissioners and aldermen and poll worker and sheriffs and constables and a mayor and those kinds of positions. There was a guy in Idaho who actually had it right on his official government bio. He had a long list of affiliations. It says Military Police Regimental Association, American Legion, John Birch Society, Oath Keepers, Idaho Farm Bureau. And then there was a guy in South Dakota and another state senator from South Dakota who actually is the only one who said that he

doesn't support the group anymore. Is there a lot of that? Like, oh, I signed up for this group back in the Obama administration because he was coming for our guns. And, you know, it doesn't really mean that much to me. What is the line between I am an oath keeper and believe that the election was stolen and therefore the insurrection was valid and like, yeah, I love the constitution and I gave this group some money in 2012? Certainly the majority of the people I talked to were in the position of, yeah, I joined, I paid my dues, I never heard from them again. January 6th. And almost all of them would answer with misinformation about what actually happened on January 6th or, you know, excuses or minimizing. And very few, just one or two, actually condemned the Oath Keepers and what happened on January 6th. And obviously there are people in our federal government, in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, who believe or at least purport to believe that the election was stolen from

the former president. Why does it matter that there's also people on the local level who hold these beliefs? It makes groups like the Oath Keepers more dangerous because it lends them credibility. Instead of being shunned by people in positions of authority, they're being welcomed by people in positions of authority. And that helps them spread their message further. Mike Clampett in North Carolina is a state legislator. And I was talking with him about joining the Oath Keepers a long time ago. And I asked him, do you still participate in the Oath Keepers now? And he said, yes, I'm a state legislator. And I was talking with him about joining the Oath Keepers a long time ago, and I asked him, do you still participate in the Oath Keepers now? And he said, yes, I'm a state legislator. For him, being a public official is how he participates in the Oath Keepers. He sponsors bills like increasing penalties for demonstrating,

which was a response to the George Floyd protests in Raleigh last year. Ironic. And he also co-sponsored a bill to let elected officials such as himself carry concealed weapons in places like courthouses and schools where they're currently not allowed. A state senator, Wendy Rogers,

and a state rep, Mark Fincham, they have been leaders of this effort to audit the 2020 election and then on the basis of that, recall the electors or decertify the election. And Mark Fincham is actually running for Secretary of State now, which is the position in Arizona that's in charge of the state's elections, and Trump has endorsed him for that. The former president's out of office, but the Oath Keepers are going strong. They participated in the insurrection.

Some of them are facing criminal charges for doing so, but that hasn't slowed anything down. Has this group grown, I don't know, even more bold since then? I think it's important to distinguish between the group, meaning the organization itself, and the cause of the group or the ideology of the group. And so the organization itself is kind of a mess. And the charges have made things worse in that regard. The idea that the FBI was going to dismantle the Oath Keepers the way that the FBI

dismantled the mob is just not what's going on here. And really, if you think about it less as an organization and more about a movement or an ideology, that has clearly only spread more and become more widely accepted in the Republican Party. And just to be clear here, it is not illegal to belong to this group. It's not illegal to belong to any group. How does the government handle this? That's a really hard problem that federal law enforcement is trying to figure out. Sort of how do you disrupt the radicalization? How do you stop people from turning ideas into violence before they're violent, but without infringing on freedom of political expression? It's a really difficult challenge. And back to what happened in 2009 with that DHS assessment, they've messed it up in the past. You are seeing a bunch of candidates who were, you know, even if they weren't Oath Keepers, they were there on January 6th. And that's a key message of their campaign now.

I mean, this has become kind of a core part of what one of the parties stands for. Isaac Arnsdorf, he covers national politics for ProPublica. Our episode today was produced by Victoria Chamberlain. She's a veteran, but not an oath keeper. Happy Veterans Day. It's Today Explained. you