John Williams, a wilderness survival trainer acting as a freelance vigilante, spent over two years undercover infiltrating top right-wing militias like AP3 and the Oath Keepers, secretly recording their leaders and amassing a massive trove of internal documents. This dangerous infiltration reveals a new generation of militia leaders—including doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement officers—and highlights the persistence of extremist networks post-Jan. 6. Williams has leaked these files to ProPublica to expose their operations and sow deep, systemic paranoia within the militia movement.
**THE DAILY EXPOSÉ**
*Late Edition — Price Two Cents*
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### **SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: THE SHADOW IN THE SAGEBRUSH!**
#### **How a Lone-Wolf Vigilante Hoodwinked the Nation’s Most Dangerous Armed Leagues and Escaped with Their Secrets!**
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**SALT LAKE CITY —** This is the chronicle of John Williams, a modern-day wilderness scout who lived a double life in the dark underbelly of America’s private armies. For two long years, he played the stool pigeon in the camp of the radical militias. He did not whisper his secrets to the local coppers, nor did he sing to the G-men. He kept his jaw wired shut to his kith and kin.
But today, the gaff is blown. Williams has handed this newspaper a massive, explosive satchel of secret recordings and private communiqués—a sensational peek behind the curtain of a new generation of armed leagues led not by backwoods bootleggers, but by high-society doctors, government lawyers, and city prosecutors.
And now, as the political winds howl, experts whisper that these extremist night-riders are poised for a grand renaissance under the banner of Donald Trump.
Here is the inside story, penned by our hard-nosed scribes who braved the shadows to bring you the truth.
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### **PART I: THE FLIGHT OF THE DOUBLE-AGENT**
On the April fool’s day of 2023, John Williams knew his number was up.
He didn't stop to wash the coffee mugs in his sink. He didn’t know if armed goons were already tracking his scent. In a fever pitch, Williams grabbed his getaway bag from the closet—a satchel packed with the bare essentials of a man on the lam: three pairs of woolen socks, a small roll of greenbacks, lockpicks, disguises, and silver, thumb-sized drives containing a library of highly encrypted digital dynamite.
He high-tailed it to his car, a faded, twenty-year-old jalopy. He drove into the rugged foothills overlooking Salt Lake City, curling his massive six-foot-four frame into the back seat to sleep.
Under the cover of darkness, he turned on a speaking-machine to record his diary. His voice was a low, cigarette-rasped growl. "Where to fucking start," he sighed. The pressure of the masquerade had made him reckless. He had tried to play the Good Samaritan to save a man’s skin, but he’d bungled the job. He was certain his cover was blown. "It’s only a matter of time before it gets back to the rest."
When the sun broke, Williams slipped a heavy envelope into a U.S. Mail box. No return address. Inside was a gold medallion belonging to the notorious "Oath Keepers" and a silver drive of secrets.
It was addressed to this reporter’s desk.
Williams had pulled off a dazzling stunt. Posing as a flag-waving brother-in-arms, he had climbed to the top of two of the country's most formidable militias. He had slept in the home of the high chieftain of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his private desk in the dead of night. He had played a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse to expose ties between these militants and high-ranking lawmen. He had even sabotaged their plots to shadow a young news-scribe.
But now, the game was up. He was a fugitive, burning rubber south toward the desert, where a man can disappear into the dust.
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### **PART II: THE MAKING OF A SHADOW MAN**
Our ink-stained scribe first heard from this phantom five months prior. It came via a mysterious, anonymous wire: *"I have been attempting to contact national media and civil rights groups for over a year and been ignored... I’m tired of yelling into the void."*
Of all the reporters in the country, only we took the bait.
In late-night, scrambled calls, Williams revealed his hand. He had been galvanized by the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021—an insurrection where groups like the Oath Keepers plotted to block the election by force. Believing the Republic was under siege, Williams went into the militia underground "on spec"—a freelance vigilante. He wanted to blow the racket wide open, but he didn't trust the federal dicks. He was a lone wolf.
To verify his wild tales, we poured over tens of thousands of his secret files: hours of wiretapped chats, private videos, and internal ledgers. We tracked down his associates and dug into his turbulent past.
It turned out Williams was no stranger to the hard life. A decade before, he had spent three years in the state reformatory for sending threatening wires to investigators after a misdemeanor arrest. He grew up gay in a hostile country home, escaping into the woods to avoid his father’s fire-and-brimstone wrath.
But the state pen was his finishing school. There, Williams learned how to handle toughs, gang leaders, and guards. He mastered the art of steering a conversation without the other fella ever knowing he was being led.
When he got his ticket out of the stir, he became a wilderness guide in the Uinta Mountains. He was a rugged misfit who once spent forty days alone in the desert with nothing but a pocketknife, living off chipmunks and wild berries.
Then, around New Year’s of 2019, a chieftain from the "American Patriots Three Percent"—the AP3—offered him a grand to teach his boys how to survive in the wild.
Williams took the dough. It was a decision that would alter his fate.
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### **PART III: THE FROZEN MOUNTAIN AND THE SHAME**
The training ground was Peter Sinks, Utah—a frozen canyon colder than a polar bear's grave. Williams spent three days teaching a dozen armed men how to build hidden bivouacs and light fires without throwing up smoke.
But the talk around the campfire turned his stomach. He heard anti-Semitic slurs. When the drill ended, the AP3 chiefs handed him a matching gang patch. It felt less like a patriotic league and more like a lawless motorcycle gang.
Then came the Capitol riot on January 6. Watching the newsreels, Williams spotted a rioter wearing the very patch he had seen in the Utah snows.
A cold wave of shame washed over him. *Did I train that thug?* he wondered. *Because I wanted their dirty greenbacks?*
Shame turned to a craving for vengeance.
Williams stood before his bedroom mirror, practicing his act. He studied his posture. He rehearsed his lies until they sounded like gospel. "I'm Dave. I'm tall," he told his reflection.
He re-enlisted in the AP3, playing the part of a zealous recruit. His prison-honed guile worked like a charm. He gave the Utah commander, Orion Rollins, patronizing advice on how to tighten up their security to keep out G-men and red hackers. Rollins was thrilled. "It's time to learn and become as untraceable as possible," he wrote back.
By March of 2021, Williams had slick-tongued his way into becoming the militia’s "intel officer."
"My hands are tied," Williams lied to his commander. "If I'm not able to take charge, the whole militia might unravel." He got the promotion. Now, if anyone suspected a rat in the ranks, they’d ask Williams to lead the hunt!
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### **PART IV: THE CHIEFTAIN AND THE SHERIFF**
In November of 2022, Williams hit the jackpot. He was introduced to Bobby Kinch, a boisterous retired detective who had taken the reins of the national Oath Keepers after their founder, Stewart Rhodes, was sent to the big house for sedition.
Kinch was a career copper who had spent twenty-three years hunting down gangs on the Las Vegas beat before his career went sideways. In 2013, Kinch had posted on the internet that he’d welcome a "race war." The department warned the Secret Service he might be a threat to President Obama. Kinch turned in his badge in disgrace and moved to Utah, but he still had an itch for action. "Violence did solve quite a bit," he’d tell his followers.
Kinch took a liking to Williams. He invited the spy to stay at his half-million-dollar cabin near Zion National Park.
The house was packed with rifles. On the walls hung plaques quoting Hemingway: *"There is no hunting like the hunting of man..."*
While the two men drank coffee, Williams’ pocket wire-tap—disguised as a USB drive—accidently became a playtoy for Kinch’s dog. Williams watched in terror as the beast ran around with the bug. If Kinch examined it, the jig was up. Williams eyed Kinch’s pistol on the kitchen counter, ready to pull a Jesse James if he had to. But Kinch merely took the toy from the dog and handed it back, apologizing for the pup.
Later, on an hour-long drive to an Oath Keepers summit, Williams' bug recorded Kinch reminiscing about his copper days. "I black out when I get angry," Kinch confessed, describing how he once woke up in a bush, hands bloody, counting his bullets to make sure he hadn't iced someone. "I miss the adrenaline. It was a hoot."
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### **PART V: HIGH-SOCIETY CONSPIRATORS**
At the secret meeting in Cedar City, Williams was stunned by the caliber of the conspirators.
He expected the usual run of disgruntled flatfoots. But sitting at the table was a prominent Ohio OB-GYN who worked for a major health syndicate, alongside a Utah city prosecutor. They discussed their plans to rebuild the Oath Keepers like a slick corporate franchise. "I’d like to see this organization be like the McDonald’s of patriot organizations," one swell remarked.
But it wasn't all corporate talk.
"We had surveillance operations," Kinch boasted.
Another lieutenant, David Coates, bragged that they had the local county Sheriff in their pocket. "The Sheriff is my tie-in to the state attorney general," Coates claimed.
Williams’ blood ran cold. The rot went all the way to the halls of justice.
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### **PART VI: THE SABOTAGE**
To dig deeper without raising eyebrows, Williams recruited a greenhorn: Rowan, a nineteen-year-old punk on probation for punching a woman and threatening to blow up a police station. Williams used the boy like a pawn, getting him to run background checks.
Rowan soon delivered a chilling discovery: the militia had a "red list" of news-scribes. They had even conducted a stakeout of a student reporter’s home.
Williams was torn. Should he blow his cover to save these writers from a potential beatdown?
Instead, he turned to sabotage.
When protests erupted in January of 2023 over the police killing of Tyre Nichols, the militias prepared to head to the streets with their heaters. Williams, terrified of a bloody shootout, spun a phantom yarn. He sent urgent messages to the militia heads claiming he would be undercover at the rally, and that if any militia boys showed up, they might blow his cover.
The chieftains swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. They ordered their goons to stay home. Williams had stopped a street war with a single lie.
But the strain was eating him alive. He was vomiting blood from the stress. He checked his grocery stores for shadows. He became so paranoid he wanted to sweep his own therapist’s office for bugs.
Yet, his double-cross was wildly successful. By March, Williams had engineered a coup, getting the AP3 national founder, Scot Seddon, to fire the Utah leader and install Williams as the state’s top boss.
He was now the kingpin of the very outfit he loathed.
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### **PART VII: THE TRAP IS SPRUNG**
The end came swiftly.
During an AP3 online meeting, a woman from a small Virginia town claimed she wanted to "settle a score" with a local news-scribe who was covering her political antics.
Williams couldn’t let it slide. On March 31, he sent an anonymous warning to the reporter: *"Because she is a member of a right-wing militia group and is heavily armed, I wanted to let you know... I believe her to be dangerous."*
The next morning, the journalist printed the warning—complete with a screenshot of Williams' note.
The circle of suspects on that private call was tiny. Williams knew the hounds would soon be at his door. He grabbed his go-bag and hit the breeze.
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### **CODA: "THERE'S TURNCOATS EVERYWHERE!"**
Late last month, this reporter met Williams in a dingy hotel room. He insisted on no telephones—the walls have ears.
He wore a camo cap and a "Spy vs. Spy" t-shirt. He was calmer now, though he still believes his former pals will try to put a bullet in him once this rag hits the stands.
He doesn't regret his crusade. Two months ago, when he published an anonymous essay teasing that he had been a mole, a wave of sheer paranoia ripped through the AP3.
"Fucking trust nobody," the AP3 founder Scot Seddon barked in a leaked message. "There’s fucking turncoats everywhere."
That distrust is exactly what Williams wanted. He plans to dump thousands of secret files online, exposing every dirty copper and corrupt sheriff tied to the movement. And he wants his former comrades to know exactly who put the screws to them.
Every time those armed toughs meet in a backroom or line up at the shooting range, Williams wants them looking over their shoulders.
"I want them to be thinking," Williams said with a grim smile, "‘This guy next to me will betray me.’"