Morning Briefing: Oath Keepers Lawyer Indicted
Morning Briefing: Oath Keepers Lawyer Indicted
Kellye SoRelle, lawyer for the far right militia group the Oath Keepers, was indicted for tampering with documents, conspiracy, obstruction of a federal proceeding, and misdemeanor trespassing.
Morning Briefing: Kellye SoRelle, an attorney for far-right militia group Oath Keepers, was “arrested and charged as part of a conspiracy to obstruct” the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. SoRelle, who has “surfaced at various points in both the investigation of the Oath Keepers and of the Proud Boys,” allegedly “told others to withhold and ‘alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal’ items from the federal grand jury” investigating the Capitol Riot.
Boston Children’s hospital received a bomb threat this week “after weeks of harassment from rightwing campaigns that have targeted the hospital for working with transgender youth.”
4chan users, which have a history of conducted coordinated harassments campaigns on social media, have reportedly been “targeting The Trevor Project, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention non-profit in an attempt to swarm the call-in phone lines to cripple its suicide hotline.”
Hanover County School Board “voted 5-2 to approve a policy that requires Hanover’s transgender students to submit a request to use school bathrooms that align with their gender identity and gives the school board the authority to approve or deny those requests.” The school board reportedly adopted the policy which “was largely drafted” the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the fundamentalists Christian far right legal advocacy organization.
During the trial of a member of the Proud Boys, video evidence emerged of Oregon State House Rep. James Hieb (R-Canby), who was recently arrested “on suspicion of disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer,” which reportedly shows Hieb during 2020 “clash between right-wing militants and their left-wing adversaries, covering his retreat from downtown Portland with a mist of pepper spray.”
White Nationalist Nick Fuentes and his dedicated group of followers, so-called “groypers,” have been reportedly been “flooding TikTok with content created by Fuentes and his cohorts, even though Fuentes himself was banned from the platform,” and “have successfully employed primitive ban evasion tactics — including intentional misspellings — to dodge moderation and to widely circulate their hateful and bigoted content.”
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Zachary Petrizzo and Roger Sollenberger write that “immediately after the news of the Aug. 8 search broke, pro-Trump online message boards began to light up with graphic violent threats, some of them targeting specific FBI agents after their names were revealed in right-wing news reports. The threats have continued even as they spilled over into the real world—through the armed attack on the FBI’s Cincinnati field office three days after the search, as well as the armed protest outside the bureau’s Phoenix field office two days after that. They haven’t stopped. And Trump hasn’t tried to stop them, despite acknowledging that he believes he has influence to help turn down the temperature. In fact, far from quelling the tension, Trump sees the situation as an expression of justified frustration, according to two advisers, and he has further inflamed the agitation by repeatedly criticizing the search and even calling for a new election.” [The Daily Beast]
Kiera Butler writes that “‘Parents’ rights’ is Moms for Liberty’s rallying cry. But they don’t mean every right. They’re decidedly unconcerned about a parent’s right to ensure that their gender nonconforming child is safe at school, for instance, or that their immunocompromised child is protected from Covid. Rather, the Moms who are for Liberty have mobilized around parental concerns that are decidedly conservative. They want to excise lessons on systemic racism, LGBTQ-friendly books, accommodations for transgender students, and Covid mitigations like vaccine and mask mandates. They want to defend the Second Amendment rights that have allowed school shooters to obtain weapons. They work toward these goals with an unflagging spirit of good cheer—hence the ‘joyful warriors’ conference theme.” [Mother Jones]
Elle Hardy writes that the “NAR, as it’s often called, is a shadowy movement, rather than an organization; many who are considered a part of it deny that it even exists. Broadly, it seeks to return church structures to the fivefold ministry of the Bible (defined roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher). The key roles in this pecking order are prophets, who have the visions, and apostles, the anointed ones who put ideas and networks into practice and, critically, to whom everyone else must submit. While it all sounds rather dull and bureaucratic, the NAR is all about establishing new hierarchies, a dry run for how it wants to take control of society.” [The New Republic]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right; Field Notes delivers research on key organizations and analysis of the strategies and tactics of the Radical Right.
