Leaked records show Utah police and elected officials attended far-right Oath Keepers meetings
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Documents uncover ties between the extremist group and the conservative politics, police and legal establishment. Documents from a Utah offshoot of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia show that two 2023 leadership meetings of the extremist group were attended by former law enforcement officers, a serving prosecutor and a former elected official.
The meetings – whose minutes record discussions on “Helicopter Landing Zone (HLZ) Bird Training”, “Hand to Hand Training” and the “role of an armed responder” – show how deeply intertwined the organization had become with conservative politics, law enforcement and the legal establishment in the cities of Utah’s metropolitan Wasatch front region and beyond.
The revelations also show that the November 2022 conviction of Stewart Rhodes over the Oath Keepers participation in the January 6 insurrection provided little deterrent to the participants, who instead made concerted efforts to rebuild local and national Oath Keepers organizations.
Now that Rhodes’ sentence has been commuted by Donald Trump – one of 1,500 pardons and commutations for convicted January 6 rioters – experts say the capacity of the organization to regenerate is an open question. The Guardian contacted all of the Oath Keepers members named in this story for comment and none responded.
