Oath Keepers membership list leaked

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The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that's accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday.

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 enforcement agencies - including as police chiefs and sheriffs - and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.

It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Appearing in the Oath Keepers' database doesn't prove that a person was ever an active member of the group or shares its ideology. Some people on the list contacted by The Associated Press said they were briefly members years ago and are no longer affiliated with the group. Some said they were never dues-paying members.

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. It asks its members to vow to defend the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.

More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers - including Rhodes - have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Rhodes and four other Oath Keeper members or associates are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weekslong plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in power.

But since Jan. 6 and Rhodes' arrest, the group has struggled to keep members, she said.

That's partly because Oath Keepers had been associated so strongly with Rhodes that the removal of the central figure had an outsized impact, and partly because many associated with the group were often those who wanted to be considered respectable in their communities, she said.

Among the elected officials whose name appears on the membership lists is South Dakota state Rep. Phil Jensen, who won a June Republican primary in his bid for reelection. Jensen told the AP he paid for a one-year membership in 2014 but never received any Oath Keepers' literature, attended any meetings or renewed his membership.

Jensen said he felt compelled to join because he "believed in the oath that we took to support the U.S. Constitution and to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic." He wouldn't say whether he now disavows the Oath Keepers, saying he doesn't have enough information about the group today.

I don't even know what they're posting. I never get any updates," said Mike Hollinshead, sheriff of Idaho's Elmore County. "I'm not paying dues or membership fees or anything."

I feel like someone keeps forgetting that this country was founded on an insurrection, it's kind of what we do. My major problems with this one are that it wasn't actually an insurrection, it was a riot, and that it was so incompetent, the whole thing was just embarrassing.

Meanwhile the leader of cowboys for trump just got booted from his government job after a judge in New Mexico ruled that the 14th amendment applied, which prohibits him from holding office, because of his participation in an insurrection. So there you have it - an American judge, who’s allowed to be the judge of that, has judged it an insurrection regardless of what you want to call it.

I feel like someone keeps forgetting that this country was founded on an insurrection, it's kind of what we do. My major problems with this one are that it wasn't actually an insurrection, it was a riot, and that it was so incompetent, the whole thing was just embarrassing.