A new investigation finds that hundreds Oath Keeper members are current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security — the agency theoretically tasked with defending the public against extremist right-wing movements.
Federal law enforcement employees “have access to federal intelligence that pertains to far-right military groups and therefore might have information about active investigations or personnel within the Oath Keepers,” Mike German, a former FBI agent who has infiltrated far right and white supremacist groups, told POGO and OCCRP.
As such, the presence of Oath Keepers members within DHS could at best represent a conflict of interest for employees and at worst be used as a tool for groups like the Oath Keepers to avoid scrutiny from the federal government and operate with impunity. Indeed, as the report notes, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who along with several other Oath Keepers has beenattack on the Capitol, once wrote of the value of this relationship. “It’s men like this on the inside who can and do provide information to expose what’s going on,” he wrote on the group’s blog in 2009.
Such dangerous extremism in the hands of people tasked with powerful security jobs could have dire consequences. For instance, reporters haveas the January 6 attack was in progress and Congress was preparing to certify the results of the 2020 election, Secret Service agents had attempted to remove then-Vice President Mike Pence from the Capitol.
The Oath Keepers’ overlap with agencies within DHS is ideologically consistent with the way that many of these agencies operate. Border Patrol and ICE carry out the U.S.’s most cruel anti-immigration policies, for instance. As one Border Patrol agent wrote, per the report, “Most Border Patrol Agents are Oath Keepers, we just haven’t signed up yet.”
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