Prepper paranoia and fear of retaliation filled the fund-raising in the wake of the 1/6 insurrection. One side of the story in advance of prosecution emerges as the Daily Beast reports on internal communication of the Oath Keepers.
In the weeks after theJan. 6 Capitol riot, the leader of far-right group theOath Keepersencouraged members to borrow money to hoard fuel, in advance of what the group claimed would be a Biden administration attack on the power grid. All the while, the group was making almost daily withdrawals from a crowdfunding site, totaling nearly $30,000.
A leaked troveof Oath Keepers messages, uploaded by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets this week, reveals some of the group’s communications after members participated in the Capitol attack. Prominent in the leak are paranoid email blasts from the group’s founder,Stuart Rhodes, who told members that the Biden White House was about to “conduct a ‘night of the long knives’ decapitation strike” on Oath Keepers under the guise of a massive power outage. Those conspiratorial fears were frequently accompanied by appeals to spend money.
One week after the Capitol attack, while Donald Trump still held office, Rhodes sent an email pleading for the then-president to invoke the Insurrection Act in order to cling to power, leaked emails show. (Although the message is addressed to Trump, it is unclear whether Rhodes sent it to him or merely included its text in an email to Oath Keepers.) Part of Rhodes’s justification, a mere seven days after the Capitol riot, was the supposed threat from the left, which he thought would begin attacking pro-Trump families.
Scott Dworkin: This was not an attempted coup. This was a failed coup. Their intention was for their own supporters to be heard that day so they could shut down the gov’t. They wanted ppl to get hurt. The ppl who did the damage were in the WH w/ Trump.@funder@TheDemCoalition
‘He actually had no idea whether the things he was saying were true or not’: Rudy Giuliani, under oath, reveals baseless origins of election claims https://t.co/VfutWmVMLm
people about a deadly virus thereby causing needless COVID deaths of Americans is legal; inciting an insurrection is legal. Refusing to prosecute Trump for his crimes is the DOJ giving Trump’s conduct its stamp of approval. And THAT will encourage all politicians to do the same.
— Dr. CAM #ERANow #VoteBlueIn2022 (@camcath) October 2, 2021
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Police in Austin, TX have arrested Ryan Faircloth for throwing a Molotov cocktail into the Travis Co Dem Party HQ: He “was not happy with the current political climate. He blamed this office, and who they represent, for a lot of the issues he saw as problems with the country.” pic.twitter.com/6jfnZi1KOl
I’m just astonished by how blunt Hillary was in her interview with me yesterday. She’s genuinely afraid—as I am, as so many of us are–that this country will descend into minority rule. https://t.co/KbcQAXRGnepic.twitter.com/B3NvbaReNf
