WATCH: Oath Keepers are a ‘violent militia,’ former spokesperson of extremist group says

Jason Van Tatenhove, former spokesperson of the Oath Keepers, testified on July 12 as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack presented its findings to the public. The focus of the hearing was on extremist far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the role they played in the Capitol insurrection.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Van Tatenhove has since broken with the Oath Keepers and spoken out forcefully against the violent group. He asked Van Tatenhove to explain who the Oath Keepers are.

Van Tatenhove said he covered the Oath Keepers as an independent journalist before he accepted a job with the organization.

“I spent a few years with the Oath Keepers. They may not like to call themselves a militia, but they are — they're a violent militia,” Van Tatenhove said. He went on to say that he recognized how members of the organization continued to radicalize over time.

That radicalization continued as the Oath Keepers members and those who were “courted” by founder Stewart Rhodes “drifted further and further right into the alt-right world, into white nationalists, and then straight-up racists.”

In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.

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