Speaker 1: I covered January sixth as an investigative reporter. A lot
Speaker 1: of people remember the images of violence against police officers
Speaker 1: outside the Capitol and people, you know, rummaging through desks,
Speaker 1: but it's easy to forget how much worse it could
Speaker 1: have been. You know, this mob got within one hundred
Speaker 1: feet of Vice President Mike Pence, who they'd been saying
Speaker 1: they want to hang for treason. It was always struck
Speaker 1: by like this kind of feeling that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of things I didn't think the public got much
Speaker 1: of a chance to see, and just kind of ever
Speaker 1: since wondered where does the militia movement go from here
Speaker 1: after this kind of huge calamitous event. You know, are
Speaker 1: we going to look back at January sixth as the
Speaker 1: peak of militia violence in America? Or is just the
Speaker 1: prelude to something even more consequential.
Speaker 2: Josh Caplin is an investigative reporter at Pro Publica. After
Speaker 2: January sixth, he didn't just wonder what would happen next
Speaker 2: for the militia movement. He decided to find out. He
Speaker 2: gained access to hundreds of thousands of internal messages sent
Speaker 2: by the Shadowy Militia Group AP three or American Patriot
Speaker 2: three Percenters. These messages tell the story of AP three
Speaker 2: from the ashes of January six for their transformation into
Speaker 2: one of the biggest armed right wing militias in the
Speaker 2: United States. Now AP three is gearing up for the
Speaker 2: November election, and Josh has uncovered a picture of what
Speaker 2: could happen next. From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This
Speaker 2: is seven AM today Josh Caplan on the three Percenters,
Speaker 2: their politics and their plans. It's Monday, September sixteen. So Josh,
Speaker 2: I thought we could go right back to the very
Speaker 2: beginning of your interest in this. Can you take me
Speaker 2: into your reporting and tell me about the kind of
Speaker 2: picture that you started to form of AP three and
Speaker 2: the ideology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the three Percenters take their name from
Speaker 1: the claim that only three percent of Americans fought in
Speaker 1: the American Revolution. So it's organized around this idea that
Speaker 1: a very small vanguard can, with concerted action, stand up
Speaker 1: against what they see as tyranny. And one of the
Speaker 1: chief activities this group has is very serious paramilitary training,
Speaker 1: getting together with guns and practicing storming buildings with semi
Speaker 1: armatic rifles, attacking dummies with knives, but there's all these
Speaker 1: strange things about the groups that I found surprising. They
Speaker 1: do charity drives for the homeless, they celebrate Valentine's Day together,
Speaker 1: they have a monthly magazine with kids games in the back.
Speaker 1: And the leader of the group, Scot said, is kind
Speaker 1: of a surprising figure to lead a major paramilitary group.
Speaker 3: Good morning, guys. Just want to wish everybody a very safe, happy,
Speaker 3: healthy Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaker 1: He's a former Army reservist, but also spent most of
Speaker 1: his adult life bouncing between jobs. He worked as the
Speaker 1: manager for a small time rapper. He worked as a
Speaker 1: model and appeared on the cover of erotic books.
Speaker 3: We're a conservative American law abiding group. We believe in
Speaker 3: constitutional law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It started on basically just an idea on Facebook, and
Speaker 1: you know, before long it was several thousand people that
Speaker 1: span active duty law enforcement, active duty military, alongside convicted criminals,
Speaker 1: small business owners, healthcare professionals. But broadly they see themselves
Speaker 1: as the last line of defense against the excesses of
Speaker 1: the government and the left.
Speaker 4: Well, they're going to find out who has not gotten
Speaker 4: their vaccine, who has an American flag outs out in
Speaker 4: front of their hole, who's the conservative, who's the conservative
Speaker 4: gun owner?
Speaker 3: They are going to feel you out.
Speaker 1: Trust me, If you take a lot of what Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is saying literally, then we're in a situation where
Speaker 1: America has been taken over in a vast conspiracy. The
Speaker 1: authorities are either sleep at the wheels or in on it,
Speaker 1: and they are coming for you. It's the exact sort
Speaker 1: of thing that they feel like they need to step into.
Speaker 1: No one else is going to do anything. So these
Speaker 1: brave men and their guns are going to make a difference.
Speaker 2: Right And Josh, the militia movement, it didn't with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: So where does something like AP three come from? And
Speaker 2: how has it evolved?
Speaker 1: So the modern militia movement in the US started in
Speaker 1: the early nineties really around issues of gun control, and
Speaker 1: it was expanding rapidly. And then in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: a military veteran with militia tized blew up a government
Speaker 1: building in Oklahoma City and killed almost two hundred people,
Speaker 1: which was at the time the largest of terrorist attack
Speaker 1: ever on American soil.
Speaker 2: And Nathay McVeigh guilty guilty of murder, guilty of conspiracy,
Speaker 2: guilty on all eleven federal charges that he faced in
Speaker 2: the Oklahoma City bombing trial.
Speaker 1: And that kind of killed the movement in the US
Speaker 1: for a long time. But then in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight you have Obama's election, who is portrayed by much
Speaker 1: of conservative media as this undercover Marxist as a secret Muslim.
Speaker 1: Obama and his wife, I'm concerned that they could be
Speaker 1: anti white, that he might hide that a Christian. This
Speaker 1: is a crustation. What is our counter going end up?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: And you also have a financial crisis. Those two factors
Speaker 1: kind of rekindled this new generation of groups. So AP
Speaker 1: three and other three percenters groups started at that time.
Speaker 1: The Oaskeepers, who became very famous for their role in
Speaker 1: the Capital Riot, became very big national militias in the US.
Speaker 5: The events in Washington have taken a violent and tumultuous
Speaker 5: turn in the past few hours, as thousands of supporters
Speaker 5: of President Trump stormed the US Capital Building, venting their
Speaker 5: anger at the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential election.
Speaker 5: They forced the evacuation.
Speaker 1: The people involved in the January sixth riot are associated
Speaker 1: with the January sixth riot. In the weeks after, there
Speaker 1: were pariahs groups like AP three and other groups like
Speaker 1: it were just hemorrhaging members and they know their leaders
Speaker 1: were talking internally that we may not survive this. This
Speaker 1: may be the end of our movement. It was a
Speaker 1: time of real strife and depression for this wing of
Speaker 1: the far right. So what changed One there was a
Speaker 1: shift in the political climate that none of them expected,
Speaker 1: where Trump and other prominent figures in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: embracing the January sixth writers as patriots.
Speaker 6: They were there with love in their heart.
Speaker 4: That was it unbelievable, and it was a beautiful day.
Speaker 1: And you started having people actually joined saying I was
Speaker 1: inspired by January six And they were able to have
Speaker 1: really pretty massive success recruiting through Facebook again, with as
Speaker 1: many as fifty people applying every day to join. It
Speaker 1: doesn't take very long for that to become a really
Speaker 1: large number. They've already tried to shape American life through
Speaker 1: armed vigilanti operations, and they've been royaled by this pass
Speaker 1: intensifying schism over the question if and when they should
Speaker 1: commit mass political.
Speaker 2: Violence after the break the actions AP three are already
Speaker 2: taking and what will happen should Trump lose. So josh
Speaker 2: AP three started to grow again after January sixth. They
Speaker 2: went from being shunned in the immediate aftermath of that
Speaker 2: day to having people line up to join them. So
Speaker 2: can you tell me what you've learned about what they've
Speaker 2: been doing with this reinvigorated membership. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are people that regularly put themselves into
Speaker 1: very volatile situations while heavily art and so they have
Speaker 1: a lot of tactics, you know, from staging a counter
Speaker 1: protest of a defund the police rally with the explicit
Speaker 1: purpose of building ties with police. They talk about getting
Speaker 1: intelligence from them and actually being asked by the police
Speaker 1: to assist them in operations. They were assaulting Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter protesters and rounding up migrants at the US Mexico border,
Speaker 1: doing these armed vigilanti patrols where they would catch migrants
Speaker 1: and at gunpoint stop them and pass them along to
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Okay, guys, American pageor Super.
Speaker 4: Sam, we are here. We are on the border as
Speaker 4: we said we would be.
Speaker 1: We rived earlier today and then in the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two mid term elections, Scott said kind of put out
Speaker 1: a call to arms that they were going to stake
Speaker 1: out ballot boxes where people can drop off absentee ballots
Speaker 1: and try to intimidate people that they believed might be
Speaker 1: trying to commit fraud. Very quickly went wrong because one
Speaker 1: of their members was standing outside a ballot box in
Speaker 1: Arizona with a handgun on his chest, in full tactical gear,
Speaker 1: and he got a confrontation with a woman. Law enforcement
Speaker 1: arrived the scene, and this quickly blew up became a
Speaker 1: huge national story.
Speaker 6: Officials in Arizona are now stepping up security after describing
Speaker 6: instances in which vigilantes their word were seen loitering around
Speaker 6: ballot boxes. NBC's gave Gutierra's reports from Miracle.
Speaker 1: Ba count As soon as the guy was in the news,
Speaker 1: he quit the group in order to protect them. And
Speaker 1: so is anyone reading about this at the time and
Speaker 1: for many months later would just think, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a lone wolf rather than fairly carefully organized vigilanti operation
Speaker 1: from a militia, Okay.
Speaker 2: And so as that's happened, and as we've moved closer
Speaker 2: and closer to election day, what are we hearing from
Speaker 2: the group's founder from Settin.
Speaker 1: He's been going through some difficulties with the groups. As
Speaker 1: I said, he was an army reservist, but he presented
Speaker 1: himself as as much more than that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: he said on a public resume that he was a
Speaker 1: veteran of the Gulf War. You know, this is something
Speaker 1: he leaned on to get authority within the group, to
Speaker 1: get people to follow him. And eventually one of his
Speaker 1: own members got their hands on his discharge papers, and
Speaker 1: according to his military discharge papers, he was active duty
Speaker 1: for five months, and that consisted of initial training that
Speaker 1: caused an explosion internally of people who felt they'd been
Speaker 1: lied to, And then a rumor started to spread that
Speaker 1: he was under investigation for fraud, and that led to
Speaker 1: a bunch of people leaving the group and joining other militias.
Speaker 1: So broadly, the movement has gotten more fractured and more
Speaker 1: to centralize, and that means that it could be much
Speaker 1: harder for law enforcement to track these groups and to
Speaker 1: intervene before one can commit violence.
Speaker 2: So can we talk about the upcoming election. We're seeing
Speaker 2: signs already that Trump, should he lose, might not concede defeat.
Speaker 3: I will totally accept the results of this great and
Speaker 3: historic presidential election.
Speaker 1: If I win.
Speaker 2: He's alluded to a blood bath.
Speaker 1: Now, if I don't get elected.
Speaker 4: It's going to be a bloodbath for the whole that's
Speaker 4: going to be the least of it. It's going to
Speaker 4: be a bloodbath for the content.
Speaker 2: How do comments like that get interpreted by AP three
Speaker 2: members and what are they actually saying about their intentions
Speaker 2: for the upcoming election.
Speaker 1: I think that's the really crucial question behind all of this,
Speaker 1: just to give a taste of this, how they're thinking
Speaker 1: about this. In AB three, they're sure it's going to
Speaker 1: be stolen again. One leader wrote that this election is
Speaker 1: not going to be decided at the ballot, is going
Speaker 1: to be decided at the amal box. And if you
Speaker 1: look at the polling numbers, even of how Americans are
Speaker 1: viewing political violence, support for political violence seems to only
Speaker 1: be growing. And these groups haven't gone away. They've gotten smarter,
Speaker 1: and you know, if AP three is any example, they've
Speaker 1: gotten angrier. I think the things that experts are most
Speaker 1: fearful of is if trump fulfills the promise he's made
Speaker 1: repeatedly that if he wins, he will pardon January sixth defendants.
Speaker 1: They fear that whatever his intention is, people on the
Speaker 1: most extreme side of the Republican Party could take it
Speaker 1: as a get out of jail free card for committing
Speaker 1: violence for the cause.
Speaker 2: Well, Josh, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: It's been really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, former top public servant Katherine
Speaker 2: Campbell says she's escapegoat after an independent review found her
Speaker 2: to have breached the Public Service Code of Conduct in
Speaker 2: relation to her handling of the illegal Robodet scheme. Miss
Speaker 2: Campbell is among twelve current and former public servants who've
Speaker 2: been found to have breached their obligations ninety seven times
Speaker 2: according to the Australian Public Service Commissioner Review. And voters
Speaker 2: in New South Wales will wait several weeks to find
Speaker 2: out the official results of the council elections held over
Speaker 2: the weekend. It's been an unusual election marched by the
Speaker 2: New South Wales Liberal Party accidentally failing to nominate more
Speaker 2: than one hundred and thirty six councilors across sixteen different
Speaker 2: council areas. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 1: You