Greetings, MW reader! Here you’ll find another MW BiMonthly, covering April and May 2026 this time. Key stories these two months include:
- DOJ acting on behalf of right-wing extremists, including militia members
- Oath Keeper aligned sheriff in hot water over ballot seizure
- Several new investigations into hate groups provide insights
Last MW Update was also a BiMonthly, covering February and March. You can read it here:
DOJ Acts on Behalf of Far-Right
On April 15, the DOJ filed motions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to fully erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of 12 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders, including Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola. Within hours of his inauguration in January 2025, Trump commuted these sentences but left convictions on the books. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro signed this new motion and stated the prosecutions were “not in the interests of justice.” Ed Martin, now serving as U.S. pardon attorney, publicly celebrated, saying J6ers told him they feel respected and loved.
This is the furthest the administration has gone in expunging these convictions from the record, and it would allow for those without other felony convictions to once again purchase firearms. Rhodes and Tarrio were photographed together at a No Kings Protest in Dallas in late March, just weeks before the DOJ filing.
On April 21, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the DOJ had obtained a federal grand jury indictment against the SPLC, charging the anti-hate organization with wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Trump DOJ alleges that the SPLC improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay informants inside extremist groups and FBI Director Kash Patel severed the bureau’s long-running relationship with the SPLC. After the SPLC motion to dismiss, the DOJ sought to fix errors in the original indictment with a superseding version and published a draft copy before it was publicly docketed, likely violating grand jury secrecy rules. Bad faith arguments from the right abound, often centered around claims that without paid informants from the SPLC, right-wing extremism wouldn’t exist in the United States (a provably false narrative).
In early May, Trump released a new counterterrorism strategy that prioritizes “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist” groups as a core national security concern. The Atlantic Council, a centrist think tank, said the assessment “says nothing of threats from right-wing groups, despite the fact that these groups have caused the vast majority of US domestic terrorism deaths since 2001,” which they say is “analytic malpractice.”
Former Oath Keeper Seizes 650K Ballots, Courts Order Him to Stop
Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff and former Oath Keepers member has been at the center of an escalating constitutional standoff over his seizure of more than 650K ballots in March. Bianco, who came in fourth place in California’s nonpartisan gubernatorial race in early June, claimed he was investigating a ballot count discrepancy reported to him by a local citizens group. Bianco orchestrated these seizures while being one of the highets polling conservative candidates for the governor’s office.
Internal emails obtained by Cal Matters revealed the investigation was initially prompted by lobbying from a member of New California State, a right-wing secessionist group. Bianco then separately assured a member of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) that he had opened a second investigation. He then seized an additional 426 boxes of materials, defying orders from California Attorney General Rob Bonta before the California Supreme Court issued an emergency order directing him to stop his review of the ballots in early April.
This is a troubling new example of a network of right-wing Patriot groups acting as a pipeline directly into a sitting county sheriff’s investigative decisions. Notably, he has also given a kind of bizarre KQED (NPR) interview.
Recent Investigations Reveal Hate Group Coordination Plans
Will Carless, reporting for USA Today, revealed that, as of early 2026, Patriot Front has more than 540 members spread across every state except Hawaii. According to leaked documents from the white nationalist group, more than half of these members were recruited within the past two years. An internal message from PF leader Thomas Rousseau established a goal of 600 members by the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which is in about four weeks from time of writing this BiMonthly.
An investigation by Sean Craig and Wiley Cope for the Guardian included identification of members of Patriot Front, Active Clubs, and the Hammerskins who trained together at a Wolves of Vinland compound in Lynchburg, Virginia in December 2025 and March 2026. Included in the investigation are Logan Florence, a (likely former) metro Atlanta schoolteacher, Marston Snedden, the son of a prominent anti-abortion activist, and Joshua Hunt, a former West Virginia police officer.
Though not always covered in these posts by MilitiaWatch, cross-group coordination among the fascist right continues. This is occurring even as street mobilization by militia groups has waned over the last few years. Obviously, much attention is (rightly) devoted to keeping an eye on the behaviors of the state, which is (mostly) beyond the scope of these updates, except for where clear coordination is apparent.
Further Reading
- Writing for HateWatch, Calum Farley details the ways that militias responded to the Kirk assassination (not well!)
- Writing for ProPublica, Hannah Allam examines the counterterrorism strategy doc, specifically examining how it ranks threats by politics rather than intelligence assessments