Josh Kaplan Profile picture
Aug 17 10 tweets 4 min read Read on X
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” Message from internal AP3 channel: "curtain needs to come down on this horrible melodrama we call a country we don't need this government all we need is our Constitution and we'll be fine mark my words the next election won't be decided at a Ballot Box 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 Scot Seddon in an awkward shirtless pose with a woman in lingerie on the cover of “How to Handle a Younger Man: A Collection of Five Erotic Stories"
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.

Several AP3 members in with rifles training outside
AP3 members with guns and tactical gear training indoors.
The cover of an issue of AP3's magazine.
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…

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More from @js_kaplan

Oct 11, 2022
NEW: Did you know that @GovRonDeSantis overruled Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature to push through a Congressional map that dismantled Black-held districts?

Here’s the inside story of how that happened.

It may have violated Florida’s constitution.
First: The DeSantis plan wiped away half of the state’s Black-dominated congressional districts, dramatically curtailing Black voting power in America’s largest swing state.
propublica.org/article/ron-de…
One of the districts eliminated by DeSantis had been created by the Florida Supreme Court just seven years before.

DeSantis shattered it, breaking the district into four pieces. He then tucked each fragment away in a majority-white, heavily Republican district.
Read 15 tweets
Jun 28, 2021
Last week, Pelosi announced she would create a select committee to investigate Jan. 6.

@jbsapien and I talked to more than 50 people involved in Jan 6, from the Trump White House to far-right militants, and reviewed months of private texts. Here’s some of what we found.
Before we get to the White House news, let’s start with the movement itself.

Even before Jan 6, something strange was happening in conservative grassroots politics.

How that happened and where it’s going from here could have implications well beyond the Capitol riot.
On one side was Women For America First, in many ways a descendant of the Tea Party—a lot of the same people, similar tactics, similar rhetoric.

On the other was Ali Alexander’s Stop the Steal coalition, a new, more extreme element within the GOP grassroots ecosystem.
Read 17 tweets
Oct 6, 2020
Last year, I started going to DC eviction court and was shocked by how many tenants lost their cases simply because they didn't show up. I started trying to understand why, and the answer was much stranger & more disturbing than I imagined. dcist.com/story/20/10/05…
Tenants find out about their eviction cases in D.C. through private process servers, who are paid by landlords or their lawyers. And one man has come to dominate the process service industry in D.C.—Karl Stephens, operating out of his home in Silver Spring.
I read through thousands of cases involving Stephens and his associate Matthew Buck. And there was immediately a striking difference from most of their competitors: despite having tenants' addresses, they claim they are basically never able to find them home.
Read 9 tweets
Dec 13, 2019
The allegations surrounding seclusion and restraint in D.C. schools are disturbing, and hard to summarize. The techniques are dangerous, but completely unregulated in D.C. public schools and charters. And they're exclusively used against children of color.
washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/2…
The many allegations in D.C. include a child with intellectual disabilities punched the face while she was being restrained, causing vomiting and loss of consciousness, and a nonverbal, autistic child grabbed by the throat and thrown into a bookcase.
Most states strictly regulate seclusion and restraint. Not D.C. A national advocacy group found that D.C. has less protections for children than just about any state in the country.
Read 5 tweets

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