After two years of actively participating in militia, ‘the infiltrator’ is dropping 13 gigabytes of ‘internal, secretive communications,’ says “APIII and other paramilitary groups provided the muscle” for voter intimidation A new set of leaks from inside the Telegram chats of the American Patriots Three Percent militia group (AP3 or APIII) reveal a sprawling network buzzing with activity. We got in touch with someone who infiltrated this group for around two years; they gave us a full explanation of why they spent so long trying to get into the group’s leadership circles, which span many states. ‘The infiltrator’ wrote, “I spent two years infiltrating right-wing terrorist groups. I can say firsthand that voters are at risk on Election Day.” An investigation ProPublica released in August is based in part on the same overall group of leaks. While no one in APIII has caught terrorism charges, the infiltrator has emerged with a lot of receipts which raises questions of whether APIII has violated laws around voter intimidation. “In addition to providing ProPublica with more than 100,000 internal messages I am publicly releasing a selection of these messages. The public release includes more than 13gb of internal, secretive communications covering their ballot box watching in 2022, and almost 200gb of related public Telegram channels,” the infiltrator wrote. The infiltrator told Unicorn Riot, “The right wing paramilitary world has not given up their goals of influencing national politics through vigilante action. Their efforts in 2024 will not look like those in 2022. They learn from their mistakes and are very adaptable. Their efforts are likely to be less overt this year. They never faced consequences for their actions in 2022, they have the same extremist beliefs, the same people are active in the same spaces, and those people are still part of groups which are very organized and motivated. We should not mistake their lack of overt action for lack of activity. If anything they are more emboldened and determined. They will continue to engage in paramilitary vigilantism until they are stopped.” ‘The Infiltrator’ statement to Unicorn Riot The infiltrator told us, “I spent more than two years infiltrating APIII and was granted access to their chats as they believed me to be one of them,” which included face-to-face meetings as a bona-fide member. Unicorn Riot has covered the presence of Three Percenters at various flashpoints over the years. 2018 was a banner year for Three Percenters — which is a distinct networked subculture, not a formal organization. They co-organized a “We the People” rally in Philadelphia along with local Proud Boys including Zachary Rehl, who received a 15-year federal prison sentence last year for the January 6 attack. Also in 2018, we found that St. Paul police improperly released a group of Three Percenters who came armed to a protest after the killing of Philando Castile. In Louisville, Kentucky, people carrying Three Percenter insignia attacked a Democratic Socialists of America gathering in 2018. Three Percenters were linked to disinformation that inspired a police crackdown on protesters in Georgia in 2018. Three Percenters were among Proud Boys and others in Portland street fighting in 2018; this was part of a larger coordination network, logs later showed. In 2020 we found Three Percenters overlapped with a “Patriotwave” Boogaloo Boi spinoff subculture. In 2020 they co-organized “Liberate Minnesota” rallies against Gov. Tim Walz’s Covid policies. In 2021 we published III% Security Force Discord chat logs, showing a fractured militia thirsty for violence. ProPublica reported members of APIII were intricately involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that aimed at overturning the 2020 election results by force, as an element of the larger III% subculture. In August a federal judge sentenced Daniel Edwin Wilson, part of the III% group ‘Grey Ghost Partisan Rangers’ and the Oathkeepers, to five years for J6 rioting; Kelly SoRelle, another III%-connected figure, pleaded guilty to charges related with tampering with J6 evidence; this is all part of patterns tracked by the website Militia Watch.
via unicorn riot: APIII Militia Infiltrator Warns of Danger to 2024 Elections; Leaks Show Targeting Journalists