Speaker 1: Before we get into it, be advised that this series
Speaker 1: contains bad language and references to violence. At two thirty
Speaker 1: p m. On January six, the crowd at the east
Speaker 1: side of the US Capital is a mass of heaving bodies.
Speaker 1: Rioters are surging forward as police in body armor attempt
Speaker 1: to hold the line. Limbs, flagpoles, batons, railings, and riot
Speaker 1: shields are tangling in a violent mess. But in the
Speaker 1: midst of the chaos, a small group stands out from
Speaker 1: everyone else. They're decked out in full camo with body armor,
Speaker 1: helmets and radios. Okay, guys, were on open channel here.
Speaker 1: Now everybody can hear and talk. What makes them different
Speaker 1: is the way they're moving. They're walking slowly in single file,
Speaker 1: each with a hand on the shoulder of the person
Speaker 1: in front. They're piercing through the crowd, working their way
Speaker 1: to the front. In the military, this way of moving
Speaker 1: is known as a ranger file or ranger stack. It's
Speaker 1: a standard formation for ground troops about to breach a building.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what this group is going to do.
Speaker 1: This is what we lived up for, everything we fucking
Speaker 1: trained for. They're communicating via a walkie talkie app called Zello,
Speaker 1: the name of their channel, stopped the Steel j six.
Speaker 1: Like tens of thousands of their fellow protesters, these people
Speaker 1: want to prevent what they see as the theft of
Speaker 1: a presidential election. They've just thought it out a bit
Speaker 1: more than everyone else. We have a good, great We
Speaker 1: got about thirty of us were sticking together and sticking
Speaker 1: to the plan. This unit believes that today is their
Speaker 1: last chance to save American democracy. Today they can become heroes.
Speaker 1: That's right, mother, This is a can of war bass
Speaker 1: made in America. Fu. Yeah, in the coming weeks and months,
Speaker 1: almost every member of this unit will be identified and arrested.
Speaker 1: Today they're facing some of the most serious criminal charges
Speaker 1: to stem from the riot. But that's all for the future.
Speaker 1: For now, they're having the time of their lives. The
Speaker 1: squadron that pierced the capital like human bayonets on January
Speaker 1: six were no ordinary rioters. The men and women who
Speaker 1: moved in military formation that day were members of a
Speaker 1: well armed paramilitary force that boasts chapters all over the
Speaker 1: United States. They were, in short, members of a militia.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to look under the hood
Speaker 1: of one of the biggest militia pops in the United
Speaker 1: States and figure out how they fit into the picture.
Speaker 1: On January six, we'll meet the guy who founded the
Speaker 1: organization and still runs it today. We'll also explore the
Speaker 1: life of one of his foot soldiers who invaded the
Speaker 1: capital in the ranger Stack and fought his way into
Speaker 1: the Great Hall underneath the Capital Dome. So come with
Speaker 1: me into the United States Capital. From the teams at
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, I Heart Radio and Novel This is
Speaker 1: the Assault on America Episode three, no Ordinary Rioters. M
Speaker 1: America has always had militia's back. In the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: they were a way of organizing resistance against the British,
Speaker 1: and George Washington would never have beat the Red Coats
Speaker 1: without them. This is what gives modern militias a patina
Speaker 1: of credibility, and the way people in the Patriot movement
Speaker 1: talk today about seventeen seventy six, you'd think they'd personally
Speaker 1: skewered Redcoats on their bayonets at the Battle of Long Island. Now,
Speaker 1: the militia heyday in the eighteenth century was well before
Speaker 1: the United States had a standing army of its own,
Speaker 1: bigger and better and stronger than ever before. These days,
Speaker 1: America does have a standing army, a fairly large one.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna mess where those folks nobody, So you might
Speaker 1: ask yourself, why, in the year one are there hundreds
Speaker 1: of unregulated militia groups spread around the country and armed
Speaker 1: to the teeth. I spoke to someone who might know.
Speaker 1: I've probably dozens of threats that I've recorded in Zelo,
Speaker 1: like specifically against me for writing about groups. Hampton Stall
Speaker 1: is the editor of Militia Watch, a research platform that
Speaker 1: covers America's far right militia's He's also the guy who
Speaker 1: recorded the audio of militia members you heard at the
Speaker 1: start of the episode. Hampton worked with a w n
Speaker 1: y C journalist named Michael Loewinger, and together they eaves
Speaker 1: dropped on militia groups as the capital was stormed. I mean,
Speaker 1: it gets your heart racing, like it's It's definitely an
Speaker 1: adrenaline shot, especially when it's groups that are, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a twenty minute drive from my front door. Hampton grew
Speaker 1: up in upstate South Carolina. It is deep red territory,
Speaker 1: and when the populist right wing Tea Party movement burst
Speaker 1: onto the national stage in the late two thousand's, they
Speaker 1: gained a lot of support in Hampton's hometown. It was
Speaker 1: around then that Hampton noticed something else happening too. I
Speaker 1: started seeing people from teep party groups start taking up
Speaker 1: arms and start saying kind of wild phrases, and so
Speaker 1: there's sort of a personal interest in like, who the
Speaker 1: hell were these people that were marching around armed in
Speaker 1: my hometown. Militia movements have waxed and waned throughout America's history.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties and early nineties, militias blossomed tied
Speaker 1: to the militant white supremacist movement, but they fell into
Speaker 1: decline after militia member Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City bombing. In and later on during the Obama years,
Speaker 1: Hampton witnessed firsthand the resurgence of American militias. Many of
Speaker 1: these groups were motivated by conspiracy theories that the new
Speaker 1: black liberal president was planning to mobilize the National Guard
Speaker 1: against gun owners and put them in concentration camps. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't just ordinary civilians who were falling for this stuff.
Speaker 1: I've detected multiple times active police officers involved in militia spaces,
Speaker 1: and they've been in all the way up to chain,
Speaker 1: from just kind of expressing support to people who are
Speaker 1: in militia's to joining, you know, militia chats on Facebook,
Speaker 1: to even being members of militia groups. The whole gamut
Speaker 1: has kind of been seen more on that later in
Speaker 1: the series. After being reignited by the election of Obama,
Speaker 1: America's militia movement was given a massive boost in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. Suddenly the government that militia's loved to hate
Speaker 1: was taken over by someone they straight up loved. That
Speaker 1: is some group of people thousands so nice, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much, that's really nice. Here was a president they
Speaker 1: could get on board with, someone with obvious disdain for
Speaker 1: the workings of government, and someone who's far right rhetoric
Speaker 1: was more of an air rate than a dog whistle.
Speaker 1: They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, their rapists, and some
Speaker 1: I assume are good people. So when Trump lost in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, many of America's militias weren't pleased, and in
Speaker 1: the winter months following the election, lots of them got
Speaker 1: caught up in Alie Alexander's Stopped the Steel campaign, which
Speaker 1: we covered in the last episode. Even if they never
Speaker 1: heard the name Ali Alexander, they heard about January six.
Speaker 1: I saw it everywhere, maybe just before Christmas. People were
Speaker 1: talking about January six pretty aggressively at the time. They
Speaker 1: were saying things like we're going to go to the
Speaker 1: tunnels of the Capitol and fight Antifa down there, which
Speaker 1: is just like way more specific than stuff that had
Speaker 1: been being said for the last few months. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of what the big warning sign was for me.
Speaker 1: That made me realize, you know, it's probably a good
Speaker 1: idea when January six came around, to sit down at
Speaker 1: my computer and be watching the feeds to try and
Speaker 1: document what sort of armed groups were present, And that's
Speaker 1: how Hampton came to be recording the Zelo channel called
Speaker 1: Stop the Steel j six during the Capitol riot. In
Speaker 1: the roughly two hours of audio, we hear a militia
Speaker 1: member report back to her friends elsewhere in the country
Speaker 1: as she storms the capital. At the start of the recording,
Speaker 1: there's palpable excitement in her voice as she nears her target.
Speaker 1: Everybody's marching on the Capitol, all million of us. It's insane.
Speaker 1: We're about two blocks away from it now. Police are
Speaker 1: doing nothing. They're not even trying to stop us. At
Speaker 1: this point. As she reports back, voices from across the
Speaker 1: country cheer her on joking about draining the swamp. Trump's
Speaker 1: been trying to drain the swamp with a straw. We
Speaker 1: just brought a shop back. We're gonna have to blow
Speaker 1: the damn to drain this fucking swamp. Be safe down here,
Speaker 1: That's all I gotta say. Just be safe, be alert,
Speaker 1: and stay in groups. Like it's Christmas all over again
Speaker 1: for us patriots. Alas the Christmas vibes are few and
Speaker 1: far between and the rest of the audio, most of
Speaker 1: the voices are considerably more disturbing. They've got the gallows
Speaker 1: that upside the Capitol building. It's trying to start sucking
Speaker 1: using them. Patriots need to have the guns nearby. The
Speaker 1: FBI rats are trapped on the roof and they have
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. I won't take you through the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do that to you. But here are some headlines.
Speaker 1: For one, these guys are obsessed with Antifa. We're not
Speaker 1: dumbasses like anti Tifa. They hate Mike Pence. We got
Speaker 1: a report that Pence is a pedophile, unindicted pedophile, and
Speaker 1: They have fascinating theories about what Joe Biden does with
Speaker 1: his downtime. He's hiding an ambrazement balance and little kids
Speaker 1: off his back and having him play with his blonde
Speaker 1: leg or looker. My team was unable to fact check
Speaker 1: this allegation, but you get the point. The voices on
Speaker 1: this channel are not part of the same reality that
Speaker 1: I live in and probably that you live in. Two
Speaker 1: and neither are the militia members and the Rangers stacks.
Speaker 1: I think the crowd. While the Zelo channel cheers them
Speaker 1: on with heartwarming messages of encouragement, the unit on the
Speaker 1: ground achieves their objective. We are in the main dome
Speaker 1: right now. We are rocking at their their longer nets.
Speaker 1: They're perk and shooting people with payballs. But we're in
Speaker 1: here fucking gets some God blessom God's being, and keep going.
Speaker 1: Get it, Jess. For the militia members, this is a
Speaker 1: moment of pure jubilation. But what's extraordinary is the fact
Speaker 1: that none of them seem bothered or even aware that
Speaker 1: they're breaking the law. As they speak freely on a
Speaker 1: public walkie talkie channel. It's clear that they feel they're
Speaker 1: on the right side of history and thus untouchable by
Speaker 1: law enforcement. Patriots are taking self east together with capital police.
Speaker 1: Inside the capital, they even reassure each other that their
Speaker 1: actions are legal, using highly dubious jargon the civilian authority
Speaker 1: of we the people, constitutional enforcement action, direct action. There
Speaker 1: seems to be no understanding that those who enter the
Speaker 1: capital maskless and openly boasting on social media are putting
Speaker 1: themselves in legal jeopardy. Then again, perhaps it's what we
Speaker 1: should expect from an outfit whose getaway plan and involves
Speaker 1: hijacking federal snowplows. Those snowplows are going to be easily
Speaker 1: hot wired their diesel trucks. That's the way out if
Speaker 1: need to be. They belong to us, the taxpayers, We
Speaker 1: the fucking people. Now, I wouldn't begrudge my tax dollars
Speaker 1: going towards the world's slowest police chase with a few
Speaker 1: dozen militia members crammed into snowplows. But the point stands
Speaker 1: anyone who would even consider that route is not part
Speaker 1: of a world class conspiracy. And that's because the militias
Speaker 1: that breached the capital and the voices cheering them from
Speaker 1: back home, they're just the foot soldiers They're not to
Speaker 1: be written off. They are dangerous people breaking the hell
Speaker 1: out of some laws, but they're not the brains of
Speaker 1: the operation. That distinction belongs to someone else entirely. While
Speaker 1: the militia member in the ranger stack is broadcasting her
Speaker 1: movements on zello, there's a man standing nearby, a safe
Speaker 1: distance back from the violence. His name is Omer Stewart Rhodes,
Speaker 1: and he's the leader of the largest militia group in America,
Speaker 1: which just so happens to be the most extensively prosecuted
Speaker 1: paramilitary organization related to the January six riots. To understand
Speaker 1: his organization and what it's capable of, we need to
Speaker 1: understand the man. It's time to meet Stupard Rhodes. His
Speaker 1: involvement is exactly what I thought it would be. I
Speaker 1: knew he would never go inside the capitol. He's sort
Speaker 1: of the the leader that stands him back and ends
Speaker 1: he's gonna lead, and then hangs back. This is Tasha Adams,
Speaker 1: the estranged wife of Stewart Rhodes. I'm stating the obvious here,
Speaker 1: but Tasha is not an impartial source when it comes
Speaker 1: to Rhodes. As I record this, she's running a go
Speaker 1: fund make campaign to get money to pay for her divorce.
Speaker 1: She lives in rural Montana with her six children and
Speaker 1: a lot of animals. I think some of the noise
Speaker 1: interruption might be my chickens. Tasha met Stewart in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas in nineteen She was an eighteen year old dance
Speaker 1: instructor and one day a twenty five year old Stewart
Speaker 1: Rhodes came in for a barn dancing lesson. He's all stiff.
Speaker 1: At this point, Rhodes had already served in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army and was now a commercial artist making sculptures for
Speaker 1: local casinos. He was really assertive, almost kind of aggressive,
Speaker 1: and personality me being to innately shy and quiet person
Speaker 1: that was always something that I liked in, you know,
Speaker 1: someone to date because it's sort of opened doors for me.
Speaker 1: Stewart and Tasha lived in a tenerant life, starting a
Speaker 1: big family, but always moving from town to town, job
Speaker 1: to job. In two thousand eight, Rhodes took a job
Speaker 1: working for the libertarian Ron Paul's short lived presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: If we do the right things, we can restore the
Speaker 1: greatness of this country. Thank you very much. He must
Speaker 1: have liked something about it, because soon after the campaign flatlined,
Speaker 1: Rhodes told Tasha that he wanted to form his own organization.
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, this is something he can do for
Speaker 1: a living where all he has to do is talk.
Speaker 1: You know, this is something he can do. As Tasha
Speaker 1: describes it, his way with words and his Yale degree
Speaker 1: won him work easily enough. He just never saw it through.
Speaker 1: Tasha figured that any job that just let him speak
Speaker 1: would be a good thing for him. You know, he
Speaker 1: grew up in a family of motivational speakers and ministers.
Speaker 1: This is what they do in that family as they
Speaker 1: give speeches and they they sell multi level marketing products
Speaker 1: and they their reference and they love this stuff. This
Speaker 1: is great, you know, something you won't get fired at.
Speaker 1: Rhodes was indeed brilliant and evangelizing for his new organization,
Speaker 1: and soon created a membership structure with annual fees, and
Speaker 1: traveled the country and recruiting members. Our mission is simply
Speaker 1: to reach out and remind all active duty military, police,
Speaker 1: and firefighters of their civic obligation of their legal duty
Speaker 1: and responsibilities under Article six of the U S Constitution.
Speaker 1: It was amazingly immediate, he launched a free blog. He
Speaker 1: wrote up a bit and it was almost instant, and
Speaker 1: so in March of two thousand nine, the oath Keepers
Speaker 1: were born. It was a pressure group campaigning for police
Speaker 1: and military to keep the oaths that they'd sworn to
Speaker 1: uphold the Constitution. He created a list called the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Orders We will not bay Buist reads like a
Speaker 1: big dog whistle to the conspiracy theory that Democrats were
Speaker 1: planning to impose martial law and take everyone's guns. But
Speaker 1: at the turn of the two thousand tens, Republicans were
Speaker 1: catastrophizing that the newly elected President Obama was about to
Speaker 1: send gun owners to the gulag, and Rhodes's message found
Speaker 1: a willing audience. As the Oathkeepers grew and grew, Rhodes
Speaker 1: masterminded their transition from being an advocacy group to a
Speaker 1: straight up militia. If the people in this country were
Speaker 1: to recognize the necessity of getting back to the Founder's plan,
Speaker 1: the necessity of the well regulated militia being necessary for
Speaker 1: security or free state, if they were to do that,
Speaker 1: that were through a massive monkey wrench and the plans
Speaker 1: of the globalist oligarchy. Because they want to sarm populations
Speaker 1: that are easy to control. Under rhodes Is charismatic leadership,
Speaker 1: the Oathkeepers grew to become one of the largest militias
Speaker 1: in the country. They claimed to have over forty fee
Speaker 1: paying members. But in two thousand fourteen, something seems to
Speaker 1: have changed for Roads. His ex wife, Tasha links this
Speaker 1: change to a meeting he allegedly had with the FBI.
Speaker 1: His mental state spiraled fast after that, and that was
Speaker 1: when we realized I had to get out of this.
Speaker 1: Tasha doesn't know what the FEDS said to Stewart or
Speaker 1: if the meeting was even related to his decline in
Speaker 1: mental health, but after twenty five turbulent years of marriage,
Speaker 1: having met Rhoads when she was just eighteen, she finally
Speaker 1: woke up to the kind of man that he really was.
Speaker 1: It was actually some of the books he had laying around.
Speaker 1: He had a book in particular called The Sociopath next Door,
Speaker 1: and I just sat down and read it, and it
Speaker 1: felt like I just was drained of all life for
Speaker 1: a minute, you know. Really, after I read that, it
Speaker 1: just hit me and there was no way around it.
Speaker 1: He's a sociopath. Tasha describes years, decades of feeling that
Speaker 1: Stewart's abusive behavior was her fault. She would think that
Speaker 1: maybe she just wasn't lovable, maybe she'd done something wrong
Speaker 1: long and whatever issues he had could surely be loved away.
Speaker 1: At long last, she decided the problem was not with her,
Speaker 1: it was with her husband. Much of the abuse, Tasha
Speaker 1: alleges was financial. Rhodes was paying himself a salary of
Speaker 1: eighty thousand dollars a year to run the Oathkeepers, but
Speaker 1: Tasha says that almost none of that money trickled back
Speaker 1: to the family. We were really in a difficult place.
Speaker 1: The disparity of how money was spent was just so odd.
Speaker 1: We were just so used to it, you know, just
Speaker 1: even little things like the kids and I only ever
Speaker 1: shopped and thrift stores, but all his clothes were top
Speaker 1: of the line expensive clothes. The kids would have holes
Speaker 1: in their shoes, and you know, I think he had
Speaker 1: fifty pairs of shoes, and all of them over a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars each. I mean, just things like that. There
Speaker 1: was physical abuse to Tasha says that Rhodes would sometimes
Speaker 1: hurt her or even the kids, and then come up
Speaker 1: with ludicrous excuses. I was just practicing my martial arts.
Speaker 1: As far as we can tell, Rhodes has ever commented
Speaker 1: publicly on Tasha's allegations, and they have not been proved
Speaker 1: in a court of law. But as a relationship with
Speaker 1: Rhodes deteriorated, Rhodes's public rhetoric became increasingly extreme. He developed
Speaker 1: a working relationship with America's pre eminent conspiracy theorist, the
Speaker 1: Info Wars host Alex Jones, and would often appear on
Speaker 1: Jones's show to promote the Oath Keepers. Here he is
Speaker 1: in calling for Donald Trump to deploy the military against leftists.
Speaker 1: In the past have been opposed using the military domestically
Speaker 1: for for this purpose, he needs to use the military.
Speaker 1: We were worried about globalist using the military against us,
Speaker 1: which is gonna happen. This is globalist overthrowing our government.
Speaker 1: We better have the military stop the globalist. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to love it. Rhodes founded his organization out
Speaker 1: of a fear that Democrats were going to use the
Speaker 1: military to crush American freedoms. And now here he is
Speaker 1: agitating for the U. S military to murder his political enemies.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't just relying on Trump in the run
Speaker 1: up to January six, Rhodes appears to have made plans
Speaker 1: of his own. We have been already stationed outside d
Speaker 1: C as a nuclear option, So I've got good men
Speaker 1: on the ground already. We've been in a leadcon there
Speaker 1: last week, and we're sorting out. We're gonna be staging
Speaker 1: and we'll be there, will be inside d C. Will
Speaker 1: also be on the outside of DC, armed, prepared to
Speaker 1: go in. Rhodes is describing an armed paramilitary force lurking
Speaker 1: outside of DC, ready to enter the city at his word.
Speaker 1: This is a so called q r F, or quick
Speaker 1: reaction force. The idea is that if Rhodes gets the signal,
Speaker 1: a small group can bring weapons into d C and
Speaker 1: distribute them to the unarmed oath keepers already present at
Speaker 1: the capitol. You can only guess at the carnage that
Speaker 1: might have ensued if dozens of oath Keepers had gotten
Speaker 1: their hands on guns during the riot. On the day
Speaker 1: of the insurrection, Info Wars host Alex Jones can barely
Speaker 1: contain his excitement. Can you not feel history happening right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's happening right now. It is, and we're
Speaker 1: all we'll all need to realize that we're Americans, were
Speaker 1: born in this country at the time. For this purpose,
Speaker 1: we need to Stewart Rhodes clearly did not let go
Speaker 1: of his fear on January six He never called in
Speaker 1: the q r F. He never went into the Capitol
Speaker 1: building either. At least twenty of his oath keepers have
Speaker 1: since been arrested, some of them are looking at decades
Speaker 1: in prison. In each of their indictments, someone called Person
Speaker 1: one features prominently communicating with them all day on an
Speaker 1: encrypted signal channel called d c op jan six one.
Speaker 1: And you guessed it. Person one is believed to be
Speaker 1: Stewart Rhodes. So will Rhodes eventually get picked up for
Speaker 1: conspiracy to obstruct Congress or for the small matter of
Speaker 1: plotting an armed coup? Time will tell Meanwhile, there's no
Speaker 1: such ambiguity for his foot soldiers who entered the Capitol
Speaker 1: on jan sixth, blissfully unaware of the trouble they were
Speaker 1: storing up for themselves. Hey brother, we're boots on the
Speaker 1: ground here. We're moving on to capital now. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a booth on the ground update here. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to know more about Rhodes as foot soldiers There's
Speaker 1: been a lot written about them online, both vilifying and glorifying,
Speaker 1: depending on where Google leads you. But I figured that
Speaker 1: to get a read on them, i'd need to get closer.
Speaker 1: My name is Danisa and I am the sister of
Speaker 1: one of the domestic terrorists that tried to overtake the capital,
Speaker 1: Donovan Kraw. Dennis's brother, Donovan Kraw, is a former marine
Speaker 1: and a current oathkeeper. We heard his voice briefly in
Speaker 1: the Zello recordings. Donovan comes first in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: the riot. Donovan's picture went viral because he looked, you know,
Speaker 1: like a scary guy. He was wearing a combat helmet,
Speaker 1: ballistic goggles, and a tactical best and he was carrying
Speaker 1: a handheld radio. What I wanted to know was how
Speaker 1: does American citizen and a veteran reached this point? Where
Speaker 1: does he come from? My parents were very young parents.
Speaker 1: They were too young to be having children and be
Speaker 1: My father was a raging alcoholic and very abusive. But
Speaker 1: Donovan was kind of the protector, you know, he was
Speaker 1: my older brother. Of course I idolized him. This makes
Speaker 1: a change from Stuart Rhodes practicing karate on his own kids.
Speaker 1: Donovan and Denisa grew up in Bushnell, Illinois, and Donovan
Speaker 1: had a normal, fulfilling life, building a family, working in
Speaker 1: a factory, coaching baseball, and he and Denissa stayed close.
Speaker 1: I was a single parent and he was helping me.
Speaker 1: He worked nights at a factory, and I, of course
Speaker 1: worked days as a nurse, so he would watch my
Speaker 1: daughter while I was at work, and I would keep
Speaker 1: his daughter on the weekends. But in the two thousand tens,
Speaker 1: Donovan went through a difficult worse. He lost his job
Speaker 1: and he got addicted to alcohol and other substances, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't the only major change in his life. One day,
Speaker 1: Donovan had called me and we were just talking, and
Speaker 1: just out of the blue, he says, I want you
Speaker 1: to start saving gas and gas cans. I want you
Speaker 1: to keep cash on hand at all times, and I
Speaker 1: want you to get a map and draw a back
Speaker 1: route to my house in case you have to leave
Speaker 1: real quick and get to me. And I'm like, what
Speaker 1: in the hell are you talking about, Donovan? Why would
Speaker 1: I even need to do that. Donovan became a prepper,
Speaker 1: someone who prepares for societal breakdown. His sister, Deniso wrote
Speaker 1: it off as a drink fueled eccentricity, but it became
Speaker 1: harder to ignore. We were having a family reunion and
Speaker 1: we had it out at the property that Donovan lived
Speaker 1: on because they could do target practice and whatever Neanderthal's do.
Speaker 1: And I had walked up to the house to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, and when I went into the bathroom,
Speaker 1: I saw this magazine. It was a prepper magazine, something
Speaker 1: like you put your food in thirty three gallon drums,
Speaker 1: and very right wing magazine. So I made fun of him.
Speaker 1: I took it out and I said, what is this bullshit?
Speaker 1: I was concerned about the people he was hanging out with.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of the oath Keepers. In case
Speaker 1: you're not a regular listener, Dnisa is talking about the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff you hear on Info Wars. It goes
Speaker 1: like this. It's either President Trump is concouraged and bolstered
Speaker 1: strengthened to do what he must do, or we wind
Speaker 1: up in a holoody fight. We all know that the
Speaker 1: fight's coming. I don't know what Donovan was watching or
Speaker 1: what his online habits were, but it's clear that the
Speaker 1: kind of far right message pushed by Stewart Rhodes and
Speaker 1: others on Info Wars hit home at a hard period
Speaker 1: in Krawell's life. He felt that Obama was a Muslim.
Speaker 1: I think there were racists under tones that I had
Speaker 1: never heard from him before. I mean, he fought in
Speaker 1: the Gulf War next to all ethnicities, so this was
Speaker 1: kind of something new to me, and I think that
Speaker 1: is kind of an undercurrent of right wing media. You
Speaker 1: might have guessed that Denis's politics aren't the same as
Speaker 1: her brothers. The two drifted apart as Donovan latched onto
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in and became increasingly immersed in a paranoid
Speaker 1: world of conspiracy theories. I didn't put up with it,
Speaker 1: where everybody else would just be like, yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 1: to get him to shut up, I would tell him,
Speaker 1: you're a moron. Think about what you're saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: the mental gymnastics that he would have to do to
Speaker 1: justify FEMA camps and Hillary eating babies and just all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. It's just absolutely ridiculous. It was around
Speaker 1: this time that Denis's relationship with her brother fell apart.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and sixteen, Denisa went to a family gathering.
Speaker 1: On first day she wore an I'm with her T shirt,
Speaker 1: meaning she was going to vote for Hillary, and then
Speaker 1: the second day, I wore a nasty woman T shirt
Speaker 1: that went over not well at all. Sure enough, it's
Speaker 1: set Donovan off, and the ensuing argument would be the
Speaker 1: last time they'd speak for quite a while. In fact,
Speaker 1: Denissa wouldn't hear Donovan's voice until January, when she heard
Speaker 1: a now familiar clip on the news The Capol Donovan
Speaker 1: Krowll is looking it up to twenty years in prison
Speaker 1: for his part in the Rangers stack that preached the capital. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Stewart Rhodes, Crowl's commander is a freeman. This could simply
Speaker 1: be because Rhodes is so careful. Tasha describes a level
Speaker 1: of paranoia that has no doubt served him well since
Speaker 1: the insurrection. He's very, very aware of being recorded and
Speaker 1: monitored at all times. He won't even talk in a house.
Speaker 1: If he wants to have private conversation with someone, they'll
Speaker 1: take off their smart watches, they'll take off their phones,
Speaker 1: and they'll stand in the woods somewhere and talk under
Speaker 1: the covers of trees so satellites can't read their lips.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why Stewart wasn't eager to do an interview
Speaker 1: with me. But what if there's another explanation for his paranoia.
Speaker 1: It was in two thousand and fourteen Natasha decided she
Speaker 1: had to escape her marriage, and at around this point
Speaker 1: Rhodes seemed to unravel following a secret meeting with the FBI.
Speaker 1: Is it possible this meeting is the reason that he
Speaker 1: hasn't gone to prison. I'm not sure what happened, but
Speaker 1: he seemed to really melt down after that. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if they threatened him with, you know, with
Speaker 1: possible arrest, or if he made a deal with them
Speaker 1: and possibly worked as an informant after that. I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but he really melted it down after that,
Speaker 1: and that became dangerous. Is Stewart Rhodes a federal informant?
Speaker 1: It might explain why so many members of his organization
Speaker 1: are in prison on conspiracy charges while the alleged chief
Speaker 1: conspirator remains free. But people are starting to talk. When
Speaker 1: Rhodes attended Sea Pack, one of the biggest conservative gatherings
Speaker 1: of the year, in July, he was accosted by an
Speaker 1: Alright media influencer, both keeper Guy right Hey fake for
Speaker 1: your service. We'll love our federal informants. Oh, the macho
Speaker 1: militia man is being mocked on a live stream, taunted
Speaker 1: about being a federal informant. Explain why you haven't been yet?
Speaker 1: There's no and you've avoid at all conspiracy charges so far.
Speaker 1: The react of my ass right now, I want to
Speaker 1: go outside and fight the fucking go fight. While Stewart
Speaker 1: Rhodes defends his honor at Sea Pack, Donovan Crowell waits
Speaker 1: for the justice system to decide his fate. His sister,
Speaker 1: Danissa feels like her brother has been used and discarded.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he goes from here. I just
Speaker 1: I don't know. I missed my brother. Denisa has spoken
Speaker 1: to don open once or twice since his arrest by
Speaker 1: the FBI in January. To me, at least the way
Speaker 1: she describes it, their interactions leave open a possibility of
Speaker 1: the kind of redemption simply not possible for a man
Speaker 1: like Stuart Rhodes. I said, Donovan, I love you. What
Speaker 1: are you doing here? He said? We used to have
Speaker 1: each other's back, and I don't understand how you know
Speaker 1: what happened, But I love you too, and you know
Speaker 1: I saw a little bit of the old Donovan, but
Speaker 1: the old Donovan never lasts long. Donovan and Denis's mother
Speaker 1: died of cancer in August. When she was on her deathbed,
Speaker 1: she would have occasional phone calls with her eldest son.
Speaker 1: When Donovan would call her when she was in the hospital,
Speaker 1: all he would do was rail against the medical establishment
Speaker 1: and saying all she needed was hydrogen peroxide. My mom
Speaker 1: would just essentially set the phone down or say she
Speaker 1: had to go because he would get fired up talking
Speaker 1: about how not to take the vaccine and that the
Speaker 1: hospital was trying to kill her. The oath Keepers have
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of attention in the months since the
Speaker 1: Capital riot, but when it comes to militia's in the
Speaker 1: United States, Stuart Rhodes and his oath Keepers are just
Speaker 1: the start of the story. The malicious scene is highly fragmented,
Speaker 1: with hundreds of groups constantly forming and splintering, some with
Speaker 1: three or four members and many with dozens of people involved.
Speaker 1: This depressing prospect makes me think back to the Zelo
Speaker 1: audio that Hampton Stall recorded on J six. For all
Speaker 1: the funny stuff about hot wiring, snowplows and playing with
Speaker 1: Biden's leg hair, there were a few voices in the
Speaker 1: chat that sounded like they meant business. At some point
Speaker 1: during the riot, a mysterious General E drops by his
Speaker 1: moniker and obvious play on the Confederate General Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee General stop the still j six. General E proceeds
Speaker 1: to sketch out a plan for continuing the campaign on
Speaker 1: January seven. The premise is far fetched, but it does
Speaker 1: sound like he has equipment and manpower. First thing in
Speaker 1: the morning, we are heading out in a convoy. We
Speaker 1: have armored vehicles coming from Texas, North Texas, South Texas.
Speaker 1: We will be moving in a convoy up to d
Speaker 1: C the next two and a half days. We're going
Speaker 1: to meet in a sibyl at the Virginia river line.
Speaker 1: All Detrious and Melissa man need to report to the
Speaker 1: river on the Virginia side. We will be assembling there
Speaker 1: and we'll be taking our capital back. The good General's plan,
Speaker 1: of course, is utter madness, but so is the Capital riot.
Speaker 1: And there are voices in the group who sound like
Speaker 1: they want to sign up. Generally, this is uh Gator,
Speaker 1: even if it is someone called ead. Our group wants
Speaker 1: to link up with you and move in. If you
Speaker 1: could please contact me. You have my number and Gator
Speaker 1: isn't the only voice Jones in for treason. General E uh,
Speaker 1: this is bad Land's actual I just sent a request
Speaker 1: on Zello. Can you side Porch please? Now? This second
Speaker 1: attempt at a coup never materialized. Within twenty four hours
Speaker 1: of the Capitol Riot, d C was flooded with National
Speaker 1: Guard troops who embedded there for weeks. So we'll never
Speaker 1: know whether our General E and company would have gone
Speaker 1: through with their tough talk. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism, I'm usually inclined to take people at their word.
Speaker 1: So the million dollar question remains, what can we do
Speaker 1: about these guys? Here's Hampton Stall. I don't think that
Speaker 1: the FBI or DHS or whom have or else is
Speaker 1: going to be able to like shoot their way out
Speaker 1: of this problem. I don't think they're going to be
Speaker 1: able to jail their way out of this problem. I
Speaker 1: don't think they're gonna be able to like no knockerate
Speaker 1: their way out of this problem. Of like militia involvement
Speaker 1: in the United States, it could be termed as a
Speaker 1: hyper low level insurgency at this point, and I think
Speaker 1: a security approach will only serve to escalate that insurgency
Speaker 1: into like, very real like violence. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it's going to be as effective as everybody's hoping. The
Speaker 1: idea that a bunch of disparate militias armed with a
Speaker 1: motley assortment of rivals could present a threat to the U.
Speaker 1: S Military is often mocked by liberals. It shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: On January six, some of these people were seconds away
Speaker 1: from potentially capturing elected leaders, and god knows what might
Speaker 1: have happened. Then, when we write these groups off as
Speaker 1: y'all Kaida country bumpkins doomed to lose any fight they start,
Speaker 1: we're allowing our own biases to blind us to a
Speaker 1: very real threat. World history is filled with small groups
Speaker 1: of armed and motivated people who, through a mix of
Speaker 1: daring and blind bravado, changed the world, often for the worse.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the most frightening thing about people like Rhads isn't
Speaker 1: that they might overthrow the government or even start the
Speaker 1: civil war that many of them fantasize about. It's the
Speaker 1: fact that they have increasingly deep ties two elected leaders
Speaker 1: on the right. Imagine what might happen if these people
Speaker 1: find themselves supported and empowered by an administration all too
Speaker 1: happy to cut them loose against the enemies of the people.
Speaker 1: It's happened before in Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, and a thousand
Speaker 1: bloody little conflicts all over the globe. There's nothing written
Speaker 1: in the stars that says it can't happen here. Next time,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at a very different activists from
Speaker 1: Stewart Rhodes, a militant whose weapon of choice is memes.
Speaker 1: An l a rapper addicted to online engagement who served
Speaker 1: the social media algorithms, cruising through music and politics before
Speaker 1: finally reaching the capital with an outrageous plan in mind.
Speaker 1: Hey let's call Trump. Let's call Trump yet, so join
Speaker 1: me in episode four as we meet the guy that
Speaker 1: everyone overlooked, including myself, with dire consequences,