In January 2016,Jon Ritzheimer, a member of the Oath Keepers and participant in the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon, surrendered to authorities. The far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers claims to have thousands of members across the country. During an inventory search of the vehicles trunk, police found nine largecapacity ammunition magazines along with 2,156 rounds of ammunition. In a report published this week, COE identified 373 people in the Oath Keepers database believed to be active law enforcement officers, 117 people who seem to be currently serving in the military . The number of active duty police and military personnel who have publicly admitted to being Oath Keepers is very small; the number of closeted members may be larger. To date, at least20 membershave been arrested and face criminal charges for their activities. He also admitted to persuading his girlfriend to purchase assault rifle parts for him in order to avoid a background check. Also in 2015, Oath Keepers in Montana put out anothercall to action, summoning members to help another local miner fight the government even though the Forest Service had been working with the miner for some time to resolve the issue. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law. Local police released a statement announcing that the group broke the law byproviding security without first obtaining a license.They called on the group to cease their activities. When executing a search warrant, law enforcement officers discovered a live napalm bomb and dozens of other explosives in a storage locker; he eventually was indicted on 97 different charges, including 18 counts of unlawful possession of dangerous ordnance, 23 counts of receiving stolen property, 23 counts of possession of criminal tools, 10 counts of failure to secure dangerous ordnance, one count of perjury, and 21 counts of pandering obscenity involving child pornography. These include: Impending Takeover of the U.S. by the Marxist Left: On September 10, 2020, Twitter announced that it had banned the accounts belonging to the Oath Keepers for violating the platforms policies on violent extremist groups as part of the platforms wider effort to limit the presence of militias on its platform. Republican voters are flocking to Ron DeSantis but why? In January 2010,Charles Dyer, an ex-Marine and rising member of the Oath Keepers, was arrested for raping his 7-year-old daughter. In cases of an Alford plea, a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence for a conviction. The groups website called Quartzsite apivot pointfor Americans finally to see the looming danger of the New World Order. In the end, the Oath Keepers got a lot of headlines, but accomplished virtually nothing. Oath Keepers is an American far-right [1] anti-government militia [1] [3] whose leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the government of the United States, including the transfer of Presidential power as prescribed by the US Constitution. The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group whose members vow to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and. In June 2017, Oath Keepers participated in March Against Sharia rallies organized by ACT for America, an anti-immigrant hate group. The Oath Keepers are an anti-government, right-wing political organization committed to supporting and defending their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. He warned about a possible Benghazi-style attack targeting President Trump and said that the Oath Keepers will be stationing its best men outside of Washington, D.C. around the election because they are anticipating the government to enable a coup against Trump. The Oath Keepers were founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate. But it remains to be seen what the effects will be of putting Rhodes behind bars. The far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers claims to have thousands of members across the country. Protests broke out in the city following the grand jurys decision not to indict Wilson. The miners filed an appeal and asked the Oath Keepers toprovide securityto protect them and the mine against the BLM, claiming the BLM had a history of burning down cabins and confiscating property at whim, without due process. The Oath Keepers subsequently put out anationwide call to actionfor Operation Gold Rush, as they called it. The head of their group is not escaping justice that much is certain. Rhodes formally launched the Oath. During the 2016 presidential election, the Oath Keepers were at it again, with RhodesannouncingOperation Sabot 2016as a method to prevent the election from being stolen from Donald Trump, something the candidate repeatedly predicted. The ADL noted that the Oath Keepers have adhered to the general tenets of the militia movement, and believe the goal of this conspiracy is to form a tyrannical New World Order to enslave Americans. The groups response to the 2020 outbreak of the coronavirus is discussed in more detail below; however, it is worth noting that the national organization initially shared material on its website and Twitter account calling for increased state government involvement in stemming the viruss spread before shifting its messaging and labelling the virus as a weapon used by leftists to attack President Trump and by the government to strip away Americans rights. Under his leadership, the Oath Keepers are essentially an updated and more successful version of a similar 1990s group, Police Against the New World Order, started by retired police officer Jack McLamb, who died in 2014. In June 2020, a police officer who was on duty and policing a George Floyd protest inCosta Mesa, California, was caught donning a Three Percenterpatch with the words Oath Keeper.This is one example of a larger trend and strategy among antigovernment extremist groups to recruit and infiltrate law enforcement and military organizations. Massachusetts the site of the first battle of the American Revolutionary War. On July 26, 2013, upon posting bail and being released from jail, Kokesh was re-arrested on charges related to the Freedom Plaza stunt by violating a D.C. gun law that prohibits carrying a firearm outside of ones home. Prior to his arrest, Dyer had posted a YouTube video in which Dyer, a former Marine, said, Join the military? Oath Keepers members have not limited their activities to spouting extreme antigovernment conspiracy theories as a number of people associated with the Oath Keepers have been involved in criminal incidents since its founding in 2009. WASHINGTON The founder of a right-wing group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol spent about six . As Black Lives Matter protests spread across the United States during the summer of 2020 in reaction to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Oath Keepers offered protection to various restaurants and businesses from alleged looters and arsonists and in several cases, they showed up to provide armed security. Tied into the fact that conspiracy theories and the far-right movement have become more mainstream in the past few years, and it is unlikely that the Oath Keepers will disappear, even without their leader. [1] In the United States, one of the largest forces of social conservatism is . Rather than rely on the government, Oath Keepers have assisted following natural disasters across the United States and Puerto Rico since 2017, using these efforts to garner positive press coverage. Springdale, Washington, December 2015: Schuyler Barbeau, who was filmed in at least one video while wearing Oath Keeper attire and shared several posts in favor of Oath Keeper Charles Dyer (see below), was arrested after he tried to sell a short-barreled rifle he had converted into an illegal machine gun to an individual secretly working with law enforcement. Barbeau pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in September 2017. Bay County, Florida, October 2018: A group identifying themselves as Oath Keepers were arrested after violating curfew and for openly carrying a firearm. Antigovernment rhetoric energized his defense and underpinned his lack of cooperation in the case. Herndon, Virginia, July 2013: Gun rights activist and Oath Keeper Adam Kokesh was arrested in Washington, D.C., on weapon charges after a search warrant on his Virginia home turned up firearms and illegal drugs. Cook had previous convictions for possessing stolen property, grand larceny and attempted possession of a controlled substance. The Oath Keepers fled, leaving Bundys other supporters to mock them as cowards and delusional paranoids. A handful of members, including Rhodes,showed up in Newburgh, New York,on May 30, 2020, to support Minuta. Because the government ultimately stood down in the face of armed threats from Bundys defenders, the standoff wound up being a highlight of the radical right but one that the Oath Keepers got no glory from. Their overt opposition to President Trump made them a target for anti-government extremists, and Oath Keepers were quick to label antifa the modern day Brown Shirts. They have repeatedly called on President Trump to put an end to the terrorist insurrection of antifa, particularly in response to their alleged involvement in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, and they have offered protection to various individuals who have been doxed by supposed antifa supporters, including ICE officials and their families. The group gained notoriety for their armed participation in disputes between ranchers or miners and federal agencies, particularly in 2014 and 2015. Barbeauwas sentencedto 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext. In April 2014, Rhodes and several fellow Oath Keepers traveled to theNevada ranchof Cliven Bundy, answering a nationwide call Bundy made asking militiamen to join him in standing up to federal officials seeking to seize his cattle because he had refused to pay federal grazing fees for some 20 years. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your California Privacy Rights (User Agreement updated 1/1/21. Meanwhile, they are doubling down on conspiratorial claimsthat the election wasstolenand that the Biden administration is a nefarious entity seeking to destroy the American way of life.This signal the return of the militia movements traditional animosity towards the federal government which they largely downplayed during the Trump administration. Two elected officials in Wilbraham and Cape Cod are listed as being members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group. Following the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump lost to President Biden, the Oath Keepers began working on a weeks-long campaign to have the election overturned. The Nevada-based nonprofit was founded by Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooper Elmer "Stewart" Rhodes. The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of right-wing anti-government extremists who are part of the. Most of this is derived from the Oath Keepers' list of 10 laws or mandates titled, "Declaration Of Orders We Will Not Obey." ", Trump's 'MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT' was a line of $99 NFT trading cards with 'no inherent monetary value', U.S. When some of. The Oath Keepers also joined scores of other anti-government extremists in a show of force for Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy during a 2014 grazing dispute with the Bureau of Land Management again with the intention of preventing the agency from enforcing laws and regulations. Westfield, Massachusetts, March 2011: Oath Keeper David M. Phillips was arrested in Massachusetts on charges of possession of ammunition without the required Firearms Identification Card and four counts of possession of a large capacity firearm feeding device. However, there were no such orders from Trump, and this defense from the Oath Keepers was swiftly rebuked in court, eventually leading to Rhodes and four others' guilty verdict. Some of these have resulted in hostile and violent confrontations with government agents, others have materialized into nothing more than show-of-force demonstrations. The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders. Washington, D.C., January 2021:Federal authorities have arrested at least 25 people associated with the Oath Keepers, charging them in connection with their efforts to impede the processes governing the transfer of presidential power in the lead up to and during the January 6 insurrection. Members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, are on trial in one of the most high-profile cases stemming from the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. 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