This post is a summary meant to cover the in-depth work featured in the article here.
Summary:
- The Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT) is a former Oath Keepers affiliate based in Arizona. They are led by Jim Arroyo and his wife, Janet. The husband-wife duo incorporated the YCPT into a state-recognized non-profit in 2019 and have recently also launched a national expansion, the USCPT.
- The group left Stewart Rhodes behind officially in 2021, saying that the Oath Keepers’ national body was unresponsive and not useful.
- The YCPT is prepper-oriented and has several subunits/subgroups, of which one is the “Neighborhood Preparedness Group” structure, which seems the most likely channel through which the YCPT might challenge their adversaries with arms. These groups are led by Gary Harworth.
- The YCPT has hosted 22 meetings since summer 2020, and mention civil war in every meeting but one. Though only some members show up armed to meetings (to “provide security”), every single meeting featured discussions of firearms.
- The YCPT is extremely close with a local news outfit called the Prescott E-News and has also been quite cozy with the Chino Valley Police Department.
- A multitude of GOP candidates and elected officials have attended YCPT meetings and used the meetings as campaign stops to a cheering crowd, despite the YCPT’s “apolitical” legal stance.
- The “Yavapai Patriots” were established by a friend of the YCPT as a political action committee to legally funnel money and inertia towards conservative candidates. Only one candidate, an elected Oath Keeper, has been given money by the Yavapai Patriots so far.
- The YCPT seem to have oriented themselves towards applying for and receiving federal, state, or charity grants for their future work.
If all of this was more interesting than expected, more detail is included in this longer YCPT article.