Thread by @js_kaplan

I covered Jan 6 as an investigative reporter back in 2021. Ever since, I’d wondered: After the Capitol riot, where does the militia movement go from here?

So I spent the last few months getting inside the turbulent, secretive world of one of the largest militias in the US...

American Patriots 3% has expanded at a dramatic pace since Jan. 6, while keeping much of its activity underground.

I obtained more than 100,000 internal messages from the militia and talked to many current and former members. Here's what I found: propublica.org/article/inside…

It all sheds light on an urgent question: Will Jan. 6 prove the high water mark of militia violence or just a prelude to something more catastrophic?

To give a small taste of how AP3ers are thinking about the 2024 election, one leader predicted “it’ll be decided at the ammo box”

Scot Seddon founded AP3 in the Obama years and turned it into a powerhouse. He’s an ex-Army Reservist and ex-model. (This is him on a book cover)

His journey thru the movement is strange and fascinating, with many twists and turns, and reveals a lot about 21st century militias

AP3 has performed vigilante operations around the country—at the border, outside ballot boxes and during BLM protests.

This is a video from someone leading their armed patrols at the Texas border in 2022. In internal chats, he sent photos of 100s of migrants they “rounded up.”

While AP3 is a paramilitary group, it also operates as something akin to a Rotary Club. They organized food drives for the homeless they called "Operation Hunger Smash." They even had a monthly magazine, with militia news in the front and word games for kids in the back.

In recent years, AP3 members have been debating, with ever more intensity, whether they should engage in mass-scale political violence.

Some senior AP3 members grew so alarmed that they quit, scared by the number of people, even high-level leaders, advocating acts of terror.

Another priority has been building alliances with law enforcement agencies. AP3 has long had officers as members; they want to go much further.

How militias work to achieve those ties rarely becomes public. Internal files reveal AP3’s strategies and where they’ve claimed success

Seddon declined to be interviewed. Presented with an extensive list of written questions, he responded, “Lions do not concern themselves with the opinions of men.”

A Twitter thread can only scratch the surface of what’s been happening in the militia movement the past few years.

Read the full saga here: propublica.org/article/inside…