Oath Keepers

Oath Keepers, far-right American militia group that adheres to a conspiracy-focused, antigovernment worldview. Like many other militia organizations, its members style themselves as defenders of the U.S. Constitution as they, and not legislatures or the courts, interpret it. The group claims that a significant number of its members are current or former police officers or have served in the armed forces.

Stewart Rhodes and the founding of the Oath Keepers

The Oath Keepers were founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a former U.S. Army paratrooper who was honourably discharged after suffering an injury in a training exercise. Rhodes was a 2004 graduate of Yale Law School, and former classmates later recalled that he had demonstrated a particular interest in the Second Amendment. Rhodes was also sharply critical of the George W. Bush administration’s creation of the enemy combatant designation during the so-called war on terrorism, calling it “dangerous to our freedoms and way of life.” Rhodes would make gun rights and the enemy combatant designation central to the foundational 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey” when he created the Oath Keepers.

Rhodes secured a clerkship with the Arizona Supreme Court after law school, but his deep distrust of the government would cause friction with others in the office, and he left to enter private practice in Montana. In 2008 Rhodes volunteered for the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and it was at this time, Rhodes later claimed, that he began formulating the idea of the Oath Keepers. In April 2008 Rhodes published an article in S.W.A.T. magazine wherein he suggested that the presidency of a Democrat such as Hillary Clinton would descend into authoritarianism unless a “majority of police and soldiers obey their oaths to defend the Constitution and refuse to enforce the unconstitutional edicts” of their elected leaders.

After the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States in 2008, membership in militia groups exploded. Many on the far right also espoused the “birther” conspiracy theory, which promoted the false notion that Obama could not be president because he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen (Obama was in fact born in Hawaii). Rhodes drew support from both of these trends during the early days of the Oath Keepers, and the organization was a regular presence at Tea Party rallies.

The Oath Keepers within the broader militia movement

The mainstream Republican Party came to adopt many of the Tea Party’s beliefs, but the Oath Keepers remained on the populist “patriot” fringe, and Rhodes was an increasingly conspicuous presence in the militia movement. In April 2014 Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy resisted an attempt by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to round up his cattle, after he accumulated more than $1 million in fees and fines for allowing his herd to graze on public land. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones amplified Bundy’s call for aid on his Infowars radio program, and Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were among the dozens of militia members and followers of the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement who converged on the Bundy ranch to organize an armed resistance to the federal officers. The standoff lasted weeks, and federal agents, wishing to avoid a shootout with Bundy’s supporters, released the cattle they had seized and withdrew. To the Oath Keepers and others in the militia movement, this represented a clear victory over a government that they held to be illegitimate.

When protests erupted after a police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, heavily armed Oath Keepers appeared on the rooftops of buildings throughout the city. The Oath Keepers returned to Ferguson the following year—a move that a police official described as “both unnecessary and inflammatory.” YouTube, social media, and broadcasters such as Jones and Glenn Beck allowed Rhodes to reach a larger audience, and by 2015 the group claimed that its membership was approaching 30,000. This figure was disputed by critics of the Oath Keepers.

Oath Keepers in the Trump era and the attack on the U.S. Capitol

Rhodes was a vocal supporter of the candidacy of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and, after Trump made the baseless claim that the election would be “stolen” from him, Rhodes called upon Oath Keepers to station themselves at polling places. Democratic activists raised concerns that this would constitute voter intimidation, but “Operation Sabot,” as Rhodes dubbed the action, amounted to little. Trump was ultimately victorious in that contest, and the Oath Keepers would emerge as perhaps the most prominent “patriot” group within Trump’s orbit.

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The Oath Keepers sometimes took statements or tweets by President Trump as calls to action; for instance, when Trump warned of a group of migrants approaching the southern U.S. border, Rhodes led a group to carry out an extralegal patrol of the area. Oath Keepers acted as security at Trump rallies throughout his presidency, and Rhodes and other Oath Keepers were seated in the VIP section at a Trump event in El Paso, Texas, in February 2019. In late 2019, when Trump’s first impeachment was looming, the president implied that his removal would result in a civil war. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers seemed to embrace this possibility, responding on Twitter, “We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war.” Although Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, he was ultimately acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate. Rhodes continued to invoke this call to civil war, however, and his intensity only increased after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trump falsely claimed victory, and, much as in 2016, he claimed that he was the victim of election fraud without providing any proof. Throughout November and December 2020, Trump and his attorneys challenged the results of the election, but the transition of power continued in the background. On December 14, state electors cast their votes, formally giving Biden a victory of 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump. The last step in the electoral process was the wholly ceremonial opening and counting of the electoral ballots before a joint session of Congress. This event was required by law to take place on January 6, and some Trump supporters saw this date as their final chance to thwart the transfer of power to the Biden administration. Trump himself announced that a rally would be held in Washington, D.C., on that day, telling his followers, “Be there, will be wild!” Rhodes made no secret of the Oath Keepers’ intentions, telling Jones on Infowars that he had armed “men already stationed outside D.C.” waiting for Trump’s order. To this end, Rhodes and his lieutenants positioned a heavily armed “quick reaction force” at a hotel a short distance from the capital.

Shortly after 1:00 pm on January 6, 2021, just as the joint session of Congress was being convened, a mob of Trump supporters pushed through barricades at the western perimeter of the Capitol grounds. Amid this group were Oath Keepers, neofascist Proud Boys, and antigovernment Three Percenters as well as self-identified adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. After Trump’s rally concluded a short time later, this mob grew even larger, and rioters overwhelmed the vastly outnumbered police force on the scene. The insurrectionist mob broke into the Capitol, disrupting the electoral proceedings and forcing lawmakers and Vice Pres. Mike Pence to flee for their lives. For hours, the orderly transition of presidential power was delayed as rioters vandalized congressional offices and continued their bloody melee with the police. Order was not restored until that evening; Congress returned to the Capitol, and Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election in the early morning hours of January 7.

It quickly became apparent that the attack on the Capitol was not a spontaneous event. In the days after January 6, Rhodes attempted to contact Trump in an effort to persuade him to invoke the Insurrection Act and to mobilize the Oath Keepers as a militia to preserve Trump’s hold on power. These machinations went nowhere. The House of Representatives impeached Trump for a second time, identifying his exhortation of the mob as “inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” Biden was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2021, and over the following year more than 700 people, including several Oath Keepers, were arrested on charges relating to the attack on the Capitol. These charges included attacking or interfering with police, trespassing, and disrupting Congress’s certification of the election. On January 13, 2022, Rhodes was arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy for his role in organizing the attack. On November 29, after an eight-week trial, Rhodes and one of his lieutenants were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other, related felonies. The main charge carried a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. In January 2023 four more Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol. On May 25, 2023, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy; the judge in the case ruled that Rhodes’s actions constituted a terrorist act and that Rhodes himself was “an ongoing threat and peril to this country.”