A membership list for a far-right anti-government militia group, whose leader and several members have been convicted of seditious conspiracy against the US, includes current or former employees of the US Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency tasked with defending the nation against extremist groups.
A report from the Project on Government Oversight and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project discovered more than 300 people previously or currently employed by the DHS listed on a membership list for the Oath Keepers.
Those alleged members include people who have worked for Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service and other federal agencies under the DHS.
Most of the people identified on the list denied their membership to the group or said their membership had lapsed, though analysts said even the appearance of connections to the group reflects “tip of the iceberg” of the relationships between far-right organisers and federal law enforcement.
Democratic US Rep Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, said in a statement included in the report that “extremism within our government is always alarming, but even more so in a Department with a law enforcement and national security nexus like DHS.”
The leaked list includes identifying information for individuals who signed up for Oath Keepers membership from 2009, the year the group was founded, through 2015.
Last year, Homeland Security Secretqry Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the agency would perform an internal review to address the state of domestic violent extremism within its own ranks, declaring domestic violent extremism “the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today.”
“As we work to safeguard our nation, we must be vigilant in our efforts to identify and combat domestic violent extremism within both the broader community and our own organisation,” he said in a statement in April 2021. “Hateful acts and violent extremism will not be tolerated within our department.”
A subsequent report in March 2022 discovered “very few instances of the DHS workforce having been engaged in domestic violent extremism” but noted that DHS “has significant gaps that have impeded its ability to comprehensively prevent, detect, and respond to potential threats related to domestic violent extremism” within the sprawling agency.
The report followed a similar review from the Pentagon to study “prohibited extremist activities” and “extremist behaviour” within the US military.
A report from the Anti-Defamation League published in September revealed at least 81 people who are currently holding public office or were candidates in upcoming local, state and federal elections who were included on an alleged list of Oath Keepers members.
The membership lists also included more than 370 people currently working in law enforcement agencies and more than 100 active military members, according to the report.
Among those with ties to DHS, at least 40 people claimed to have worked with Border Patrol, seven with Secret Service, and 184 with the US Coast Guard.
Inclusion on the list does not necessarily prove that the named individuals participated or necessarily believed in the group’s causes and actions, which included armed organising at public events and a forcible disruption of the 2020 presidential election in a violent breach of the halls of Congress on 6 January, 2021.
“The range of individuals represented in the Oath Keepers leak shows the extent to which this extremist ideology has gained acceptance,” according to the Anti-Defamation League’s report. “Even for those who claimed to have left the organisation 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.”
But any credible allegation of ties to the group “potentially undermines confidence in these institutions that are so essential to the democratic rule of law,” according to Alejandro Beutel, a domestic violent extremist expert with Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy. “Especially when we come to consider that many of these far rightists have historically targeted minority groups for violence and harassment.”
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was recently convicted of seditious conspiracy for his organising efforts around the 2020 election, had pointed to the important role of maintaining relationships with federal law enforcement to both evade scrutiny and gain internal access to “what’s going on” inside institutions, as he wrote in 2009.
