INDIANAPOLIS — Hundreds of US elected officials and public servants are listed among membership rolls with the extremist far-right group, the Oath Keepers, according to a report published by the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism on Wednesday.
Of the more than 3,000 names that appeared on the leaked Oath Keepers membership list, The Anti-Defamation League believes 370 work in law enforcement agencies and more than 100 are active military members.
Hoosiers make up part of that group.
Overall, the Anti-Defamation League found 696 Hoosiers were affiliated with membership in the extremist group.
However, the organization noted those numbers could be different because members may have joined a ‘watered down’ iteration of the group, or not realized they were joining the Oath Keepers.
Rachel Carroll Rivas is the interim deputy director of research and analysis for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She said both public servants and elected officials are often targeted by the Oath Keepers organization.
"Because of the respect that they bring to the organization, and the legitimacy that they try to gain from their involvement. But they also target these communities because they have skills that are desirable, like weapons training. And they're very used to more of an authoritarian hierarchical system of organization," Carrol Rivas said.
Of the 696 Hoosiers listed, there were six elected officials, nine law enforcement officials, three military members, and five first responders from Indiana were listed as having affiliation with the extremist group.
The Oath Keepers was founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, and are a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders.
The organization asks its members to vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.
More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers — including Rhodes — have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, according to NBC News.
13News reached out to the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police to see how departments planned to address extremism within their ranks, but did not hear back.
But across the country, organizations that study extremist groups in the United States say not enough is being done to rid public entities of extremist operatives.
"We don't see enough being done at the local level by law enforcement, we don't see enough being done at the state level by state officials and attorney generals. And we definitely don't see enough being done at the level of the federal government under combating extremism in the military," Rivas said.
The leaked membership list was originally published in September 2021 by the journalism collective, Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Earlier this year, federal prosecutors alleged Oath Keepers stockpiled weapons and ammunition outside the Capitol ahead of the Jan. 6 riots.