Beware the Fringe Right

The Trump presidency will embolden chaos agents and organized right wing militias alike.

Photo by Jacqueline Martin / AP

There are three separate but related stories I’m following regarding violent extremism in the U.S.

First, Bloomberg reports that president-elect Trump is weighing a sweeping grant of clemency for hundreds convicted over the insurrection at the Capitol four years ago. This comes despite widespread public disapproval of such a move, and despite efforts by the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds more who participated in the riot.

Second, and as major media is largely ignoring, the driver who exploded a Tesla by the Trump hotel in Las Vegas wrote a final pair of mini-manifestos (or as Josh Marshall calls them, “minifestos.”) In them, he called for Democrats to be “culled” and hoped his own death would be a “bell clap” for a national rebirth of masculinity.

No really, he wrote that.

Third, there’s a stunning report by ProPublica about a mole who infiltrated top leadership of radical armed groups like the Oath Keepers. It revealed that the militia leaders, who had considered terrorist acts, include doctors, police and even government attorneys among its ranks.

Each of these represents a distinct threat: one from the highest office in the land; one from unstable, radicalized individuals; and one from the ranks of the most extremist organizations.

Trump’s promise to the far right

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently vowed to pardon many of those who committed a violent assault upon the U.S. Capitol, which was linked to nine deaths among police officers and rioters. He recently reiterated that promise in an interview with Time Magazine, which named him Person of the Year.

“We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office,” Trump said. “A vast majority should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely.”

It now seems, however, that Trump may not make individualized cases after all and may opt instead for a broad grant of clemency. Bloomberg reports,

As Trump prepares to return to power in two weeks, expectations are high for him to reward that allegiance and fulfill his promises of swift clemency for the 1,000-plus people convicted and hundreds more with pending cases.

Many experts are warning that clemency around January 6 would embolden right wing militias, who view Trump as the embodiment of their anti-government, white Christian nationalist worldview.

The tension between what Trump intends and the record the current Justice Department is hoping to make is awkwardly evident. While Trump dangles the prospect of pardons and clemency, the U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. has continued to announce arrests, even after the election in November, with as many as another 200 individuals now facing potential charges. That office has given special attention to those who stand accused of assaulting police officers.

The White House has weighed in, in its own way, too: President Biden recently awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to the co-chairs of the January 6 Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MI) and former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, to the howls of the right, who falsely accuse the Committee of running a show trial.

As The Guardian reported, January 6 defendants are eagerly anticipating Trump’s actions, and some view Trump’s decision in near apocalyptic terms:

James Grant, a North Carolina man who was found guilty of assaulting officers with a metal bike rack barricade, said the fallout from his conviction was keeping him from pursuing his career, and warned of worse consequences for others if the president-elect does not keep his promise.

“I need a pardon to return to law school,” said Grant, who has been released from prison. “If people are not pardoned, I hate to say it, but there will be suicides. These people are facing so much. What happens these next 20 days is going to change the fate of the world, and in these gentlemen’s lives, this is the biggest few weeks of their lives.”

That Grant wants to “return to law school” seems the height of irony to this attorney. And while pardons may not “change the fate of the world,” it could send a dangerous message.

Democrats are sounding the alarm. Per The Guardian, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who was also a constitutional law professor, has been particularly outspoken:

“If this is going to happen, it would be an extraordinary event in the history of the republic to have a president pardon more than 1,000 criminal convicts who were in jail for having engaged in a violent insurrection incited by that very president,” Raskin said in a press briefing organized by State Democracy Defenders Action, a group dedicated to checking Trump’s autocratic tendencies.

With just two weeks until a possible mass clemency grant, it’s hard not to conjure images of Gotham’s prisons and asylums emptying out after the Joker takes control.

Agent of chaos

The media has been dutifully reporting on many important aspects of the radicalization of the Islamic State supporter who killed many in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Substack authors such as Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubbell note, our media is choosing either to ignore or gloss over important aspects about the Tesla bomber, Matthew Livelsberger.

While the press and investigators have brought attention to Livelsberger’s military background and the lack of any ill will by him toward Trump, Marshall notes that “there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.”

After reading these, the part I found most disturbing was his rants about wanting to see Democrats “culled” from Washington. His plans seem straight out of some dystopian movie:

Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.

Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.

Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.

Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

In another screed, Livelsberger revealed a kind of “ideologically ployglot” thinking, says Marshall, railing against everything from the 1% to screentime for kids, from unending wars to DEI and obesity. This kind of generalized anger at the world doesn’t come from nowhere. It is spoonfed to millions via Fox, right-wing podcasts and radio, and within radical social media groups.

That this level of disconnect from reality could somehow lead to a violent display and the end of his own life seems still seems odd, and then you read his chilling words: “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?”

Trump understands that when he tells groups like the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” that there are radical elements willing to take extreme measures at his behest, even if he doesn’t speak his wishes aloud expressly and directly. That is the power of stochastic terror. It works precisely because there are a predictable number of unstable, dangerous men like Livelsberger out there, many of them former or even current service-members with formidable training to back up their plans.

We need to acknowledge that white males in this country are being radicalized in a manner not dissimilar to the tactics of the Islamic State when it recruits homegrown extremists. Our media and our law enforcement must understand this if they want to help prevent future Matthew Livelsbergers or Timothy McVeighs from wreaking havoc and destruction.

The mole who got further than any law enforcement

There is a final story that is a bit long and complex, published over the weekend in ProPublica. If you get a chance to read it, please do; it is compelling and reads like a tense Netflix mini-series, but there is nothing fictitious about it.

Reporter Josh Kaplan summarized the story as follows:

In 2023, I received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of 1000s of secret files.

It came from a vigilante with a tumultuous past, who’d done a years-long undercover operation. He didn’t tell the FBI or his family. He only told me

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys.

This is his story.

The mole, identified now as John Williams, is an unlikely hero. He’s a 6’4” tall gay wilderness survivalist trainer who learned how to work the system and avoid official scrutiny after serving time in prison. Through his work, he gained the trust and confidence of far right militia groups that paid for his services. It allowed him access to the very highest levels of leadership in some of the most dangerous militias, and he meticulously (and at great risk to himself) recorded hundreds of conversations and took detailed notes.

Williams tried for years to get someone in the media to pay attention to the work he had done, but it took an independent journalist at ProPublica to bite. The revelation that Williams was a mole has sent shockwave through the militias, causing them to question who among them might also be an agent, a plant or an informant. If someone as suspicion-free as Williams could get that far and win over so many, there’s no telling who else might be working against them secretly.

Some of the most disturbing parts of Williams’s account and the reporting by Kaplan involve revelations that persons high up in law enforcement—not just cops but actual government attorneys—are themselves connected to leaders within these militias. The presence of violent extremists or their sympathizers in important social and government positions represents a dangerous development for our democracy, but at least now there is a harsh light shining upon the threat.

Here’s a bit of that from the report, covering a conversation among Williams; Bobby Kinch, the current national director of the Oath Keepers; and David Coates, one of Kinch’s top deputies. (The Oath Keepers were founded and led by Stewart Rhodes, who is presently serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering in connection with January 6.) In this conversation, Williams learns how far the Oath Keepers claim they have infiltrated:

[A]s they turned from their weakened national presence to their recent successes in Utah, Williams snapped to attention.

“We had surveillance operations,” Kinch said, without elaboration.

“We’re making progress locally on the law enforcement,” Coates added. He said that at least three of them can get “the sheriff” on the phone any time of day. Like the last time, Coates didn’t give a name, but he said something even more intriguing: “The sheriff is my tie-in to the state attorney general because he’s friends.” Williams told me he fought the urge to lob a question. (The attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.)

That there is a sheriff in Utah in cahoots with the Oath Keepers, who allegedly has close ties to the state attorney general of that state, is a claim definitely worth pursuing.

In another part of the report, Williams revealed that the militias disturbingly have doxxed multiple reporters. Williams was training up a 19-year old tech-savvy Oath Keeper named “Rowan” in the hopes that he could deploy him to gain access to the accounts of leadership within the militia. This account is worth noting:

The relationship quickly unearthed something that disturbed him. The week of their call, Williams woke up to a series of angry messages in the Oath Keepers’ encrypted Signal channel. The ire was directed toward a Salt Lake Tribune reporter who, according to Coates, was “a real piece of shit.” His sins included critical coverage of “anyone trying to expose voter fraud” and writing about a local political figure who’d appeared on a leaked Oath Keepers roster.

Williams messaged Rowan. “I noticed in the chat that there is some kind of red list of journalists etc? Could you get that to me?” he asked. “It would be very helpful to my safety when observing political rallies or infiltrating leftists.”

“Ah yes, i have doxes on many journalists in utah,” Rowan responded, using slang for sharing someone’s personal data with malicious intent.

He sent over a dossier on the Tribune reporter, which opened with a brief manifesto: “This dox goes out to those that have been terrorized, doxed, harassed, slandered, and family names mutilated by these people.” It provided the reporter’s address and phone number, along with two pictures of his house.

Then Rowan shared similar documents about a local film critic — he’d posted a “snarky” retweet of the Tribune writer — and about a student reporter at Southern Utah University. The college student had covered a rally the Oath Keepers recently attended, Rowan explained, and the militia believed he was coordinating with the Tribune. “We found the car he drove through a few other members that did a stakeout.”

Williams’s work and Kaplan’s reporting reveal a disquieting truth: These groups are steadily infiltrating our civic government at all levels and are even keeping tabs on the media who are reporting on them.

While this report and the revelation of a highly placed mole will send many scurrying for now, it may prove more difficult in the future for others to make as much headway. Williams names names, and that’s a great start within a state like Utah. But it’s really just the melty tip of the militia iceberg. Groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and AP3 (which Williams first infiltrated) exist across numerous states and are particularly strong out west.

We can only assume that under new leadership such as Kash Patel, federal investigative authorities will deprioritize the risks and dangers posed by such groups. To fill that gap, it is incumbent upon local investigative media and political opposition research to unearth ties between official candidates for office and right wing extremist organizations. Yet, sadly, they must now do this while increasing their own vigilance against reprisals from these very groups and individuals.