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| Photo Credit: AP. |
A leaked membership list of the far-right extremist group Oath Keepers appear to feature hundreds of U.S. military officers, police chiefs and elected officials among its adherents, The Associated Press cited a report released Wednesday. The extremist group is accused of playing a major role in the January 6, 2021 violent attack at the U.S. Capitol,
The
Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism released over 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 it sad are currently members of the
military, The Associated Press reports.
The center
also identifies over 80 people who were running for or served in public office
as of early August, according to The Associated Press. The membership information
was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective
Distributed Denial of Secrets.
“Even for
those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more
aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers
have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to
deter these individuals from signing up,” the report says, The Associated Press
reported.
Some people on
the list told The Associated Press that they were briefly members of the group
years ago and are no longer affiliated with the group while some said they
never paid dues in the group. The released Oath Keepers database may not be sufficient
evidence that anyone on it was an active member of the group or shares its
ideology.
When was the Oath Keepers founded?
The Oath
Keepers was founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes and is a conspiracy theory-fueled
group that targets for recruitment current and former military, police and
first responders, according to The Associated Press.
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,
The Associated Press reported.
Over two
dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers have been charged in connection
with the January 6 attack on Congress.
Who are those on the Oath Keepers list?
Some of the
members of the Oath Keepers according to the database include: South Dakota State Rep.
Phil Jensen, who won a June Republican primary in his bid for reelection, Mike
Hollinshead, sheriff of Idaho’s Elmore County; Benjamin Boeke, police chief in
Oskaloosa, Iowa; Eric Williams, police chief in Idalou, Texas and Shawn Mobley,
sheriff of Otero County, Colorado, according to The Associated Press.
Some of them
either deny being active members or said they had left the organization or were
not dues paying members.
The Associated
Press quoted AOL as saying it found the names of at least 10 people who now
work as police chiefs and 11 sheriffs.