Post by the Scribe on Oct 2, 2021 19:09:25 GMT
Far-right militia group membership surged after Capitol attack, hack shows
www.yahoo.com/news/far-militia-group-membership-surged-090026594.html
Jason Wilson
Fri, October 1, 2021, 2:00 AM
Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters
Hacked materials from the website of the rightwing militia group the Oath Keepers show that hundreds of people either joined or renewed their membership after many of the group’s members participated in the attack on the Capitol on 6 January.
Related: Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/revealed-council-national-policy-republicans-extremists
They included people who joined under their military ranks, including combat veterans, retired servicepersons, at least one serving national guardsman, several members of the clergy and others involved in security contracting and the firearms industry.
Other materials in the hack show signups to petitions under government or military emails, and private email addresses being provided in response to appeals for assistance from military and service personnel.
But with many of those addresses apparently not functioning or invalid, the extent of prior involvement by government and military employees in the group was not immediately clear.
The post-Capitol attack membership surge is evident in payment records from the Oath Keepers website.
They show that 801 people either joined the organization or made donations after 4 January, when founder Stewart Rhodes posted an article on the website headlined “Oath Keepers Deploying to DC to Protect Events, Speakers, & Attendees on Jan 5-6: Time to Stand!”
web.archive.org/web/20210106073741/https://oathkeepers.org/2021/01/oath-keepers-deploying-to-dc-to-protect-events-speakers-attendees-on-jan-5-6-time-to-stand/
But almost all of that number – 788 altogether – joined or donated after Oath Keepers members participated in the incursion into the Capitol building on 6 January, with the records showing that the surge built momentum in January before slowing in February, March and April, where the records end.
There were no email addresses linked to military or government employers in the trove, but 10 sign-ups noted their military ranks in an optional “title” field, which ranged between corporal and colonel, including three men who offered the rank of lieutenant colonel.
The Guardian’s investigation of the record showed that the majority of these are retired, but some have gone on to work in other sensitive roles.
The records show, for example, that one sign-up was a former lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps and that his service included stints at the corps’ headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, before taking a position at Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor.
Another sign-up, on 7 January, was apparently another Marine veteran who also worked as a bodyguard for the military contractor Blackwater, in a US government program to provide personal protection in theaters of war like Afghanistan and Iraq.
2001-2009.state.gov/m/ds/rls/rm/93191.htm
Several other men joined who used the religious title of Reverend, including one man who appears to have run for office in Wyoming as a pro-Trump Republican candidate.
The hacked materials were provided to reporters by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets after an anonymous hacker broke into the Oath Keepers’ infrastructure.
It was not immediately apparent whether the hack exfiltrated all of the Oath Keepers’ data, or just a segment, but as delivered it contained email threads, message archives and extensive records on membership and calls to action on specific issues.
Many of the records reveal direct communications to and from Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader.
Previous reporting at the Daily Dot described hundreds of military and government emails in the trove. While many older member records and records of petition campaigns do show such addresses, Guardian attempts to contact them resulted in extensive email bounces and notices that the addresses did not exist.
www.dailydot.com/debug/military-government-emails-oath-keepers-leak/
Similarly, many private addresses were associated with explicit calls for military and law enforcement volunteers.
In each case, it was not immediately clear whether all the addresses represented currently serving military or law enforcement officers, and in some cases it was not clear if or when the email addresses were valid.
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.
NY Daily News
2 NYPD officers probed for suspected affiliation with far-right militia Oath Keepers, group linked to storming of Capitol
www.yahoo.com/news/2-nypd-officers-probed-suspected-203500978.html
Rocco Parascandola, Graham Rayman and Larry McShane, New York Daily News
Fri, October 1, 2021, 1:35 PM
NEW YORK — A pair of NYPD officers are under investigation for suspected ties to the far-right Oath Keepers militia, an anti-government group linked to the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, the New York Daily News has learned.
The names of Sgt. Stuart Wohl, who works in Firearms Training, and Officer Aniello Napoli of the department’s Strategic Response Group, appeared in hacked rosters purporting to identify members of the Oath Keepers and were identified by the Daily News from those documents.
An NYPD official confirmed an Internal Affairs investigation was launched Thursday and the department plans to interview both once its probe is complete.
The Daily News visited Napoli’s home Thursday but could not reach him for comment. A phone message left for him was not returned Friday. Wohl referred a reporter to the NYPD’s press office. Unions representatives for both officers did not immediately comment.
Both officers remained on active duty as the investigation continued. The department bars its members from knowingly associating with organizations involved in criminal activities.
“As an officer you took an oath to protect the Constitution,” said the NYPD official. “The Oath Keepers have not been designated a terrorist grouping but members have been charged for Jan. 6 as part of a conspiracy.”
The source said Wohl and Napoli are not suspected of attending the Jan. 6 insurrection. No active duty NYPD officer has been accused of joining the mob.
The 38,000-person roster does not make clear how involved each person is in the Oath Keepers.
Gothamist first reported that the names of active duty NYPD officers appeared in the hacked roster.
Another NYPD officer was already under scrutiny for his ties to Roger Stone, a close associate of ex-President Donald Trump. Sal Greco, who remains on active duty with the Citywide Traffic Task Force, was in Washington the day of the insurrection and the day before, the Daily News previously reported.
Greco was was captured on video outside a D.C. hotel with Stone and members of the Oath Keepers militia, who were acting as bodyguards.
The group’s founder has in the past claimed his group recruited a large number of current and ex-cops to their cause, along with first responders and members of the military.
Public records show five insurrectionists linked to the Oath Keepers already pleaded guilty to charges in the violent charge that followed a speech by Trump and cut off a Senate vote to verify President Joe Biden’s victory two months earlier in the White House race.
According to one indictment, 18 members of the group shoved their way to the front of the horde forcing its way inside the landmark Washington building.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised swift action to identify and discipline anyone involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection as the U.S. Senate gathered to confirm Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“We need a full investigation, and there will be a full investigation to find out exactly if any officer was involved,” the mayor said. “How were they involved? What did they do? What did they say? If it’s the kind of thing that would disqualify them from serving — as you see in the discipline matrix, there are very, very clear penalties for that kind of activity.”
Other people listed in the roster with ties to the New York City area include a retired member of the NYPD’s Highway Patrol unit, a retired MTA cop, an investigator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a retired state trooper and an MTA bus supervisor.
The roster is part of a massive data dump stemming from the hack of Epik, an internet services company popular among the far right. The data dump includes credit card transactions, email accounts and information on the owners of racist extremist websites.
A data breach notice from the company indicates at least 110,000 people have had their bank account numbers, credit cards or passwords compromised by the hack.
www.yahoo.com/news/far-militia-group-membership-surged-090026594.html
Jason Wilson
Fri, October 1, 2021, 2:00 AM
Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters
Hacked materials from the website of the rightwing militia group the Oath Keepers show that hundreds of people either joined or renewed their membership after many of the group’s members participated in the attack on the Capitol on 6 January.
Related: Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/30/revealed-council-national-policy-republicans-extremists
They included people who joined under their military ranks, including combat veterans, retired servicepersons, at least one serving national guardsman, several members of the clergy and others involved in security contracting and the firearms industry.
Other materials in the hack show signups to petitions under government or military emails, and private email addresses being provided in response to appeals for assistance from military and service personnel.
But with many of those addresses apparently not functioning or invalid, the extent of prior involvement by government and military employees in the group was not immediately clear.
The post-Capitol attack membership surge is evident in payment records from the Oath Keepers website.
They show that 801 people either joined the organization or made donations after 4 January, when founder Stewart Rhodes posted an article on the website headlined “Oath Keepers Deploying to DC to Protect Events, Speakers, & Attendees on Jan 5-6: Time to Stand!”
web.archive.org/web/20210106073741/https://oathkeepers.org/2021/01/oath-keepers-deploying-to-dc-to-protect-events-speakers-attendees-on-jan-5-6-time-to-stand/
But almost all of that number – 788 altogether – joined or donated after Oath Keepers members participated in the incursion into the Capitol building on 6 January, with the records showing that the surge built momentum in January before slowing in February, March and April, where the records end.
There were no email addresses linked to military or government employers in the trove, but 10 sign-ups noted their military ranks in an optional “title” field, which ranged between corporal and colonel, including three men who offered the rank of lieutenant colonel.
The Guardian’s investigation of the record showed that the majority of these are retired, but some have gone on to work in other sensitive roles.
The records show, for example, that one sign-up was a former lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps and that his service included stints at the corps’ headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, before taking a position at Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor.
Another sign-up, on 7 January, was apparently another Marine veteran who also worked as a bodyguard for the military contractor Blackwater, in a US government program to provide personal protection in theaters of war like Afghanistan and Iraq.
2001-2009.state.gov/m/ds/rls/rm/93191.htm
Several other men joined who used the religious title of Reverend, including one man who appears to have run for office in Wyoming as a pro-Trump Republican candidate.
The hacked materials were provided to reporters by the transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets after an anonymous hacker broke into the Oath Keepers’ infrastructure.
It was not immediately apparent whether the hack exfiltrated all of the Oath Keepers’ data, or just a segment, but as delivered it contained email threads, message archives and extensive records on membership and calls to action on specific issues.
Many of the records reveal direct communications to and from Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader.
Previous reporting at the Daily Dot described hundreds of military and government emails in the trove. While many older member records and records of petition campaigns do show such addresses, Guardian attempts to contact them resulted in extensive email bounces and notices that the addresses did not exist.
www.dailydot.com/debug/military-government-emails-oath-keepers-leak/
Similarly, many private addresses were associated with explicit calls for military and law enforcement volunteers.
In each case, it was not immediately clear whether all the addresses represented currently serving military or law enforcement officers, and in some cases it was not clear if or when the email addresses were valid.
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting.
NY Daily News
2 NYPD officers probed for suspected affiliation with far-right militia Oath Keepers, group linked to storming of Capitol
www.yahoo.com/news/2-nypd-officers-probed-suspected-203500978.html
Rocco Parascandola, Graham Rayman and Larry McShane, New York Daily News
Fri, October 1, 2021, 1:35 PM
NEW YORK — A pair of NYPD officers are under investigation for suspected ties to the far-right Oath Keepers militia, an anti-government group linked to the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol, the New York Daily News has learned.
The names of Sgt. Stuart Wohl, who works in Firearms Training, and Officer Aniello Napoli of the department’s Strategic Response Group, appeared in hacked rosters purporting to identify members of the Oath Keepers and were identified by the Daily News from those documents.
An NYPD official confirmed an Internal Affairs investigation was launched Thursday and the department plans to interview both once its probe is complete.
The Daily News visited Napoli’s home Thursday but could not reach him for comment. A phone message left for him was not returned Friday. Wohl referred a reporter to the NYPD’s press office. Unions representatives for both officers did not immediately comment.
Both officers remained on active duty as the investigation continued. The department bars its members from knowingly associating with organizations involved in criminal activities.
“As an officer you took an oath to protect the Constitution,” said the NYPD official. “The Oath Keepers have not been designated a terrorist grouping but members have been charged for Jan. 6 as part of a conspiracy.”
The source said Wohl and Napoli are not suspected of attending the Jan. 6 insurrection. No active duty NYPD officer has been accused of joining the mob.
The 38,000-person roster does not make clear how involved each person is in the Oath Keepers.
Gothamist first reported that the names of active duty NYPD officers appeared in the hacked roster.
Another NYPD officer was already under scrutiny for his ties to Roger Stone, a close associate of ex-President Donald Trump. Sal Greco, who remains on active duty with the Citywide Traffic Task Force, was in Washington the day of the insurrection and the day before, the Daily News previously reported.
Greco was was captured on video outside a D.C. hotel with Stone and members of the Oath Keepers militia, who were acting as bodyguards.
The group’s founder has in the past claimed his group recruited a large number of current and ex-cops to their cause, along with first responders and members of the military.
Public records show five insurrectionists linked to the Oath Keepers already pleaded guilty to charges in the violent charge that followed a speech by Trump and cut off a Senate vote to verify President Joe Biden’s victory two months earlier in the White House race.
According to one indictment, 18 members of the group shoved their way to the front of the horde forcing its way inside the landmark Washington building.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised swift action to identify and discipline anyone involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection as the U.S. Senate gathered to confirm Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
“We need a full investigation, and there will be a full investigation to find out exactly if any officer was involved,” the mayor said. “How were they involved? What did they do? What did they say? If it’s the kind of thing that would disqualify them from serving — as you see in the discipline matrix, there are very, very clear penalties for that kind of activity.”
Other people listed in the roster with ties to the New York City area include a retired member of the NYPD’s Highway Patrol unit, a retired MTA cop, an investigator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a retired state trooper and an MTA bus supervisor.
The roster is part of a massive data dump stemming from the hack of Epik, an internet services company popular among the far right. The data dump includes credit card transactions, email accounts and information on the owners of racist extremist websites.
A data breach notice from the company indicates at least 110,000 people have had their bank account numbers, credit cards or passwords compromised by the hack.