With Oath Keepers and Proud Boys Facing Sedition Charges, Pressure Grows on the Three Percenters Militia

     The people from the Center who continue to insist that what happened on January 6th was a riot but not an insurrection are dangerously ignorant, be it intentionally or unintentionally. On January 12th, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III; his chief lieutenant, Edward Vallejo; and nine other Oath Keepers militia members who had already been indicted for their roles in the Capitol insurrection were indicted by a grand jury on charges of seditious conspiracy, which means they plotted to use force to take over the government. Two of these Oath Keepers, Joshua James and Brian Ulrich, have pleaded guilty to that crime as has a third Oath Keeper, William Todd Wilson, who was not one of the original 11 indicted. At least a dozen other Oath Keepers have been charged with conspiracy without the sedition aspect, including Jason Dolan, Caleb Berry, Jon Schaeffer, and Mark Grods.

     Then came the indictment of the Proud Boys. It started when Proud Boys Matthew Greene and Charles Donohoe pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate against fellow group members in the winter of 2021 and spring of 2022, respectively. In June 2022, Enrique Tarrio, the group leader who had been arrested on a conspiracy charge in March; Dominic Pezzola; Zachary Rehl; Ethan Nordean; and Joseph Biggs were charged with seditious conspiracy. Several other Proud Boys have also been charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

     As the months have worn on, it has become increasingly clear that these were not separate conspiracies to disrupt the electoral count but part of one grand, overarching scheme to stop the lawful transfer of power in January 2021. The best evidence of this came in May 2022, when video was released of Oath Keepers leader Elmer Rhodes III and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio meeting underground in a parking garage on the night of January 5th, 2021. It gets bigger. Rhodes has long been a good friend of Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who spoke at Trump's "Stop the Steal" event at the Ellipse just before the assault on the U.S. Capitol. The Oath Keepers provide security to Roger Stone, a longtime GOP advisor who has served as the figurehead of their movement and was recently inducted into the Proud Boys himself. Stone, Tarrio, and Rhodes attended the "Million MAGA March" in the U.S. Capitol together in late 2020. Jones, Tarrio, and Rhodes were all members of the "Friends of Roger Stone" group on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, while Jones hosted Rhodes and Tarrio on his show to discuss their plans to stop the Biden administration from existing between November 2020 and January 2021. Jones also traveled to the Capitol that day, as did another Infowars host, Owen Shroyer (who is facing two misdemeanor charges), as well as the organizer of the "Stop the Steal" event, Ali Alexander. In spite of the fact that they stood next to each other on that day, Jones has yet to be charged over even his physical presence in a restricted area, let alone for the encrypted chats he had with men now facing sedition charges. 

     There's another layer of this extremist stew that hasn't been widely broadcast across the media. The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were two of the "Big Three" extremist groups that were present on January 6th. The third is the Three Percenters, an anti-government militia more akin to the Oath Keepers than the Proud Boys that was named after the false notion that only three percent of Americans fought British tyranny during the Revolutionary War. It was long thought that the Three Percenters were less organized and coordinated than the other two groups. That assertion proved to be false because of the activities of one man who also belonged to that Signal group: Derek Kinnison. Kinnison, one of six Three Percenters from California charged with conspiracy, was also a member of that Signal group and a former member of the Oath Keepers. In fact, he was personally added to the chat that Rhodes used to plot sedition by Rhodes himself. Kinnison is friends with Sheriff Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff featured in "To Catch a Predator" who made national headlines for his ties to the latter group.

     Bianco isn't the only law enforcement officer tied to this domestic extremist movement: the leader of the California Three Percenters conspiracy, Alan Hostetter, was the chief of the La Habra Police Department. After just months, Hostetter left the agency and became a yoga instructor who gained notoriety for opposing COVID lockdowns with his "Phoenix Project," which he ran with codefendant Russel Taylor. Aside from Hostetter, Kinnison, and Taylor, three other Oath Keepers-- Erik Warner, Felipe Antonio Martinez, and Ron Mele-- have been charged with numerous felony counts apiece for their actions on January 6th, 2021.

     There have been plenty of individuals associated with the Three Percenters movement who showed up to the Capitol on January 6th. I've highlighted Dennis Sidorski, who was sentenced to 100 days in jail for a misdemeanor charge of violent and disorderly conduct, as well as Guy Reffitt, the man who was sentenced to 87 months in prison for leading the charge on January 6th, threatening to drag Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol, and threatening his own son for turning him in. 

     Yet more arrests of Three Percenters were made just days ago, when five members of the "B Squad," a Florida-based subgroup of Three Percenters, were charged with numerous crimes (four of the men with felonies and one with only misdemeanors) for their actions plotting to attend the insurrection as well as for assaulting law enforcement in the Lower West Terrace. Run by former congressional candidate Jeremy Liggett, the group's very name is a reference to a "Plan B" for if the 2020 election did not go as they hoped. 

     Obviously, the investigation is ongoing. It appears that the Three Percenters played a much larger role in the January 6th insurrection than was initially thought. Eleven have now been charged in two separate criminal conspiracies, one of which had direct contact with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers now charged with seditious conspiracy. Given the path the DOJ has charted so far of slowly building their case from the bottom up and the middle out, I would be surprised if some or all of these 11 Three Percenters did not wind up facing seditious conspiracy charges: they did all the same things the 17 men and women charged so far have. My bet is that the DOJ wants to test the waters with the Oath Keepers trial set to begin in a few weeks. If they win a sweeping conviction or even a conviction on most counts in this trial, they are likely to pursue more serious charges against the Oath Keepers' Three Percenter co-conspirators; if an acquittal is delivered, they will likely move forward with the charges they have already pursued.

     This investigation is moving forward slowly but surely. We are nearing the end of the arduous process to hold the core leadership of America's far-right militia movement accountable. This has led to shocking connections to law enforcement, to members of Infowars and other right-wing "media" sources, and to Roger Stone and other members of Trump's inner circle. We'll see what the future holds in the January 6th case.