Secret Service agents met with members of the right-wing extremist Oath Keepers group prior to the violent January 6 insurrection, according to a report.
A Secret Service spokesperson told CNN that the agency had contact with the extremist group, whose founder and other members are currently on trial, as part of its standard intelligence-gathering duties.
The official told CNN that members of the extremist group had occasionally reached out to the agency regarding items that they were allowed to bring to rallies.
“We are aware that individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the news organisation.
The official stated that it was commonplace for agents to also reach out and contact the group when they found out they would be attending events and demonstrations.
The Secret Service’s relationship with the group has been brought up in the trial of the group’s leader Stewart Rhodes.
A court heard that Mr Rhodes had claimed he was in contact with a Secret Service agent in the months leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters.
John Zimmerman, a former member of the group, testified in the trial of Mr Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers who are charged with seditious conspiracy in what prosecutors have described as a plot to use force to stop the transfer of presidential power from Mr Trump to Democrat Joe Biden, who won the election.
Mr Zimmerman told a jury that he witnessed a phone call between Mr Rhodes and a purported Secret Service agent in September 20202 at a Trump rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Mr Zimmerman could not say for sure that Mr Rhodes was speaking to someone with the Secret Service — only that Rhodes told him he was — and it was not clear what they were discussing.
Mr Zimmerman said Mr Rhodes wanted to find out the “parameters” that the Oath Keepers could operate under during the election-year rally.
Rhodes, from Granbury Texas, and four associates are being tried on a Civil War-era charge punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The others are Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia; Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida; Jessica Watkins of Woodstock, Ohio; and Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida.
Hours after Mr Guglielmi’s comments to CNN, the Secret Service was thrust into the spotlight at the latest January 6 committee hearing.
Emails released at the hearing showed that the Secret Service was aware of plans for violence on 6 January 2021.
