“However, consistent questions regarding Rhodes’ leadership at the national level hurt their momentum on the ground. For a few years, Oath Keepers was one of the most high profile anti-government groups in Montana,” he said via email on Wednesday to the Daily Montanan. “They did have pockets of support around Montana, and they held events that sometimes even drew Republican officials. Travis McAdam, director of combating white nationalism and defending democracy for the Montana Human Rights Network, said the Oath Keepers’ goal of having a chapter in every Montana county never took off and their presence has faded. The group’s core principle is to support and defend the constitution, even if that interpretation goes against that of U.S.
#ELMER STEWART RHODES PROFESSIONAL#
He was a practicing lawyer in the state before being disbarred by the Montana Supreme Court in 2015 for violating the Montana Rules of Professional Conduct after failing to show up to multiple court hearings before the high court, according to reporting by KTVH.Īccording to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Oath Keepers’ recruitment efforts are focused on members of the military, law enforcement, and other public-safety positions. Rhodes formed the Oath Keepers in 2009 and moved to Montana in 2010. Rhodes was one of 12 Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy for their involvement in Jan. I don’t know how we’re gonna survive or where we’re gonna go, what we’re going to do I just can no longer continue and put in my resignation.”Īlong with being the group’s national spokesperson, Van Tatenhove was also a close confidante of the group’s founder and former Montana resident Elmer Stewart Rhodes. I went home to my wife, and my kids and I told them that I’ve got to walk away at this point. We were barely surviving, and it didn’t matter. In testimony, Van Tatenhove continued: “We were not wealthy people at all. Some of its high-profile members used to live in Montana, but overall the group’s prominence in the state has waned over the years, according to the Montana Human Rights Network. The Oath Keepers are one of the most prominent anti-government groups in the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And that was for me something I just could not abide,” he told the panel. But the straw that broke the camel’s back really came when I walked into a grocery store … There was a group of core members … and some associates and they were having a conversation at that public area where they were talking about how the Holocaust was not real. “I probably should have broke with them much earlier than I did. He then left the group in 2018 after overhearing a conversation between Oath Keeper members and associates in a Eureka grocery store in which they denied the Holocaust, he told the U.S. He first met up with the group in Montana to participate in the 2014 standoff between Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management over grazing fees. Jason Van Tatenhove’s involvement with the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers started and ended in Montana.
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