Proud Boys And Oath Keepers Targeted By DC Attorney General In New Lawsuit

The "militia" groups of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers are being hit with a new lawsuit from Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, arguing that these groups bear responsibility for the January 6th insurrection. The groups are being targeted thanks to anti-KKK legislation from over a century ago, and Racine argues in the lawsuit that the two groups should have to pay restitution to the city for the damage they caused. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses the lawsuit and the chances it has of being successful.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Washington DC attorney general Karl Racine announced yesterday that he would be suing the right wing militia group's Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, under an 1871 law, basically the anti KKK act, which made it illegal for outside groups to interfere with government processes. And of course this law has been used over the years to help protect civil rights and again, it is an anti KKK law established after the Civil War to basically not let the racists interfere with the government. And so they're using that because it is a very powerful law to go after both the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys, Racine alleges that these two groups were partly responsible for the January 6th Capitol riot and of course they caused untold damage there in the Capitol, and he wants to get the money back because DC had to pay for that, so he wants these groups to pay up.

I fully support this lawsuit and I hope these groups are held to account. I do not have much faith that that is in fact going to happen. In order to do that, you would have to be able to prove that these two groups organized the actual riot itself. A couple of Facebook posts here and there, you know, other social media listings, that, that's not enough proof. That's not enough to say that these groups were the masterminds behind this project and therefore should hold the responsibility. Not to mention the fact, are these even real organizations that have a, a financial structure? You know, if it's a loose knit group of individuals that call themselves these titles, I'm a Proud Boy, I'm an Oathkeeper, cool. Is there, is there an organization? Do you see what I'm saying? Like, it's like suing Antifa, which I'm sure Republicans are gonna do in response to this.

So let's just wait for that to happen, which is stupid. But Antifa is not a real thing. It's a title that these people give themselves and they go out and they do things. Sometimes it's things that we don't agree with, but, you know, they're out there actually fighting back fascism. So, you know, it's better than what these other groups are doing. But either way, there's no financial structure. There's no finances. There's no president of Antifa. There is no corporate structure. So it is difficult to sue a group that technically only exists because they say it exists. Now the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys, yes, those are people they say, I am a Proud Boy, I am an Oathkeeper. We know that people are members of these groups. What I do not know and I have not been able to find is what is the corporate structure of these things?

I know they have a leader, but do they pay dues? I mean, how are they gonna come up with the millions of dollars they could be facing in this? You see that's where things get a little blurry. Who are the members? Anybody who just comes out and says, they're a member. Is there a membership list? Is there a mailing list? Again, is there any kind of corporate structure that lists all the people involved in it? The answer is most likely, no. So again, while I do support these lawsuits, when you start to kind of nitpick it a little bit, and again, trust me, I hate the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers just as much as everybody else. I'm not defending them at all. But you're chasing ghosts. We know they're real. We know they're out there. We know they're real entities.