Oath Keepers
Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia whose leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the US government, including the transfer of presidential power as prescribed by the United States Constitution. It was incorporated in 2009 by founder Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former paratrooper. In 2023, Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and another leader, Kelly Meggs, was sentenced to 12 years for the same crime. Three other members have pleaded guilty to this crime, and four other members have been convicted of it. By September 2021, twenty members had been indicted for federal crimes related to the Capitol attack. The organization was subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee in November 2021.
Research determined that two-thirds of the Oath Keepers are former military or law enforcement, and one tenth are active duty military or law enforcement. The group encourages its members to disobey orders which they believe would violate the US Constitution. Most research determined Oath Keeper membership to be approximately 5,000 members, while leaked data showed Oath Keepers' rosters claiming membership of 38,000. Oath Keepers were present wearing military fatigues during the 2014 and 2015 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, when members armed with semi-automatic rifles roamed streets and rooftops.
Several organizations that monitor U.S. domestic terrorism and hate groups describe the Oath Keepers as a far-right extremist or radical group. In 2015, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League described the group as "heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government". The group is anti-government and extremist. Former SPLC fellow Mark Potok describes the group as "an anti-government group who believe in a wild set of conspiracy theories". The FBI describes the Oath Keepers as a "paramilitary organization" and a "large but loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government has been co-opted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights." Some researchers have suggested the Oath Keepers' organizing principle is as a "profit-maximizing firm", rather than the hierarchical and close-knit "club" structure that similar groups show.
Writing in August 2025 for The New York Times, Alan Feuer said that the Oath Keepers "barely exists anymore. Its founder, Stewart Rhodes, no longer appears in public as often as he once did at far-right demonstrations or standoffs with the government." However, in November 2025, Rhodes told The Gateway Pundit that he would be relaunching and rebuilding the Oath Keepers.
Organizational history
The Oath Keepers has been identified as one of the "largest and most prominent organizations of the militia/patriot movement." Oath Keepers was founded in March 2009 by Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate, former U.S. Army paratrooper, and former staffer for Republican Congressman Ron Paul. The SPLC lists Rhodes as a known extremist. Under Rhodes's leadership, Oath Keepers in 2013 instructed its members to form "Citizen Preservation" teams, including militias, to operate in communities across the country to defend Americans from government intentionally letting the country descend into chaos then declaring martial law and scrapping the constitution, stating that "They are preparing to control and contain us, and to shoot us, but not preparing to feed us."On December 8, 2015, Rhodes was disbarred by the Montana Supreme Court for conduct violating the Montana Rules of Professional Conduct after refusing to respond to two bar grievances filed against him in the federal district court in Arizona.
Rhodes is reported to have taken inspiration from the notion that Adolf Hitler could have been stopped if German soldiers and police had refused to follow orders. Writing in S.W.A.T. Magazine in 2008, Rhodes asserts, "'It' cannot happen here if the majority of police and soldiers obey their oaths to defend the Constitution and refuse to enforce the unconstitutional edicts of the 'Leader'."
Some researchers have observed that the organization appears to be essentially profit-seeking in nature, regardless of the precise ideological positions it takes, which have varied in their specifics over the years. Former spokesperson for the Oath Keepers, Jason Van Tatenhove, has said of Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers organization:
knows that he can tap into this and make money off of it, and continue to his own personal army weaving these narratives and telling these stories and planting these seeds.
Other people close to Rhodes have also described profit as being the animating force of the organization, and his own children describe the Oath Keepers as a "grift".
Sedona Adams:... Everything ran on donations. Sometimes be on the phone saying, "Oh, well I need money. We need to create an emergency." And so they'd find something. That's why they started doing disaster relief.
It had had nothing to do with anything that they were set out to do, but they went into disaster relief because they had nothing else to do. They were like, "Oh, let's do some kind of a charity thing and make some money."
Dakota Adams: Anything that they could put up a GoFundMe for – anything that gets a GoFundMe link in front of the mailing list.
In an October 2020 interview, reporter Mike Giglio of The Atlantic stated that in the preceding years, the Oath Keepers regarded President Donald Trump as "someone in the White House that they fully support", in contrast to their skepticism of previous Republican administrations. He also said that in recent years Rhodes's statements had become more "radical" and that because of this some members of the group with military experience, concerned that the types of violence they had witnessed overseas might occur in the United States, left the group.
Nonprofit tax status
In 2009, Oath Keepers was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Nevada, but there is no record of it receiving tax-exempt status from the IRS, making any donations to the organization non-tax deductible. The IRS has recognized at least seven local chapters affiliated with the Oath Keepers as tax-exempt organizations. Chapters in Virginia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania received tax-exempt status between 2016 and 2018. The Southern Nevada Oath Keepers and Oath Keepers of Josephine County were also granted tax-exempt status.In 2019, the IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Louisiana-based Oath Keepers Educational Foundation, whose stated purpose on filings is to "give veterans an opportunity for continued involvement in community service." Days before the January 6th United States Capitol attack, Oath Keepers' founder Stewart Rhodes appeared on a podcast and solicited charitable donations to the Oath Keepers Educational Foundation. Following a joint report from ISD and the Global Disinformation Index on the funding operations of hate groups, an expert at the GDI submitted in their February 25, 2021, statement before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy of the Committee on Financial Services U.S. House of Representatives said:
It can only be presumed that these funds, which listeners were notably able to deduct from their Federal taxes, went to transporting and lodging members of the group slated to participate in the ensuing riots.
Membership
The organization states that full membership is open to "currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, police, fire-fighters, other first responders AND veterans/former members of those services," and that others who support the organization's mission can become associate members. There is however an annual membership fee that all members must pay, and researchers have observed that the organization will accept essentially any member who pays this fee.Oath Keepers claimed 35,000 members in 2016, though researchers estimated the figure was about 5,000. In 2020, the ADL estimated there were between 1,000 and 3,000 members but said the group's influence extends well beyond that figure. In September 2021, hackers breached the group's servers to acquire a large cache of information, some of which was released to press outlets by Distributed Denial of Secrets, including the contact information of 38,000 apparent members. The cache included membership applications from active law enforcement officers, including some who sought to join after the 2021 United States Capitol attack. Dozens of elected officials were also found to be linked to the group.
A September 2022 report by the ADL said that, of 38,000 names on the Oath Keepers membership list, over 370 appear to be current employees in law enforcement agencies and over 100 are current military personnel.
Prominent members
In 2021 forty-eight state and local elected officials and ten sitting state lawmakers were members of the Oath Keepers group according to research by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.The list included:
- Scott Baldwin
- Mike Clampitt
- Chad Christensen
- Don Dwyer
- David Eastman
- Mark Finchem
- Phil Jensen
- Keith Kidwell
- Wendy Rogers
- Jim Stalzer
- Steve Tarvin
[Elmer Stewart Rhodes]