Leaked Oath Keepers’ list includes hundreds of cops, dozens of elected officials
Since 2009, the anti-government extremist group Oath Keepers has grown more extreme, preparing for civil war by recruiting law enforcement and military into local chapters nationwide.
As reports tracked a string of violent events leading up to Oath Keepers' involvement in the Capitol riots, it remained difficult for outsiders to discern just how effective the nonprofit group's recruitment really was at targeting people with real power. Then in fall 2021, the Distributed Denial of Secrets published a massive data leak, revealing names and addresses of 38,000 Oath Keepers and donors. Sorting through the data, the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism (COE) saw an opportunity to cross-reference public data on listed members and map out approximately how far Oath Keepers has come in furthering its mission to establish a secure "foothold in mainstream seats of power" throughout the US.
In a report published this week, COE identified 373 people in the Oath Keepers database believed to be active law enforcement officers, 117 people who seem to be currently serving in the military, and 81 public officials who either currently hold or are running for public office in 2022. COE's report says that the hundreds of people identified as likely active law enforcement was "far higher than any previously identified number of extremists within law enforcement," and, though much lower, the discovery of dozens of elected officials is "deeply concerning."
