ExtremismLedger
ExtremismLedger is a living public-interest database. Records are continuously reviewed, updated, and expanded as new verified information becomes available.

Oath Keepers

Overview

Oath Keepers is a U.S.-based organization founded in 2009 by Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, a former U.S. Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes it as a right-wing, anti-government militia/patriot-movement group that recruited principally among current and former military, law-enforcement, and first-responder personnel around a pledge to refuse orders its members considered unconstitutional. This page distinguishes the organization's stated identity and structure from conduct and legal outcomes involving particular leaders or members.

Founding and organization

ADL reports that Rhodes organized Oath Keepers around a list of orders members pledge to refuse (e.g., orders to disarm the population or impose martial law), a framing the group used to recruit military, police, and veteran members specifically. ADL reports the group developed a national leadership structure with state and local chapters. Following the events described below, reporting indicates the group's national leadership structure has been substantially unclear or non-functional since at least 2023, with local chapters variously dissolving, going inactive, or continuing to operate independently of any national body.

January 6, 2021

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Rhodes and Oath Keepers members and affiliates organized armed "quick reaction force" teams staged outside Washington, D.C., and coordinated in advance of pro-Trump ("MAGA") rallies and the January 6, 2021 certification of the 2020 presidential election, including providing security details at rallies in November and December 2020. On January 13, 2022, DOJ charged Rhodes and ten others affiliated with Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy and related federal offenses in connection with the January 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. On November 29, 2022, a jury found Rhodes and Oath Keepers Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs guilty of seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and other charges; several other defendants were convicted of related, non-seditious-conspiracy charges in the same and companion trials. These outcomes concern the named defendants and do not establish criminal responsibility for every Oath Keepers member or every person who attended a MAGA-aligned rally where Oath Keepers provided security.

Clemency

On January 20, 2025, a presidential proclamation commuted Rhodes's 18-year sentence to time served; the proclamation granted a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to some other January 6 defendants and commutation (not a pardon) to others. Rhodes's underlying seditious-conspiracy conviction was not vacated or reversed by this action and remains part of the record. Rhodes was released from custody on January 21, 2025.

Reported relaunch (2025)

Reporting from late 2025 describes Rhodes announcing an effort to relaunch Oath Keepers under a more decentralized structure. As of this writing, this is reported as an announced initiative; the Ledger will update this record if it develops into documented organized activity meeting further Sec. 0 criteria.

Sources