The Oath Keepers Are Back — and Targeting America’s Youth

The Oath Keepers are back. And leaked documents suggest the group is trying to rebuild its brand by targeting youth, and in particular the Boy Scouts.
The infamous paramilitary organization has been in disarray since the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, was arrested, charged, and convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the events of Jan. 6 — which included positioning armed “quick reaction” strike forces across the river from Washington, D.C., in hopes of participating in a Donald Trump-sanctioned campaign of violence. Rhodes is currently serving 18 years (that is, unless Trump decides to include him in his pardons for the Jan. 6 “hostages”).
The Oath Keepers now have a new brand, Oath Keepers USA, and a new leader named Bobby Kinch, a retired Las Vegas police officer who once gained infamy for making Facebook posts that appeared to call for a race war.
These days, Kinch lives in the mountains of Southwest Utah, and adds a populist topspin to dark visions of impending tyranny: “It doesn’t matter what your political persuasion; because if you’re not one of the wealthy elites, if you’re not one of the Davos, globalist, Marxist, progressive billionaires,” he said on a recent podcast, “you’re going to be in the same box car as everybody else.”
Kinch’s name has become nationally notable following the recent publication by ProPublica of an account by a “mole,” a wilderness survival guide named John Williams who reportedly infiltrated paramilitary groups in Utah. He primarily targeted a Three Percenter militia, but also got close to the Oath Keepers and Kinch.
Leaked documents that Williams first made available to ProPublica can now be downloaded at an anti-secrecy site called Distributed Denial of Secrets, which has a history of exposing Oath Keepers. The group previously provided to journalists a membership roster for the Oath Keepers that included many sheriffs, police, NRA honchos, politicians, and other prominent members of mainstream society.
In reality, Kinch has not been underground, but rather under the radar outside of Utah, where he became locally controversial this past summer over a speaking engagement.
Rolling Stone identified several podcast episodes, two of them self-produced, where Kinch spoke openly of his rise to lead the revamped Oath Keepers USA, as well as his views about impending violent conflicts. The substance of the podcasts has not previously been reported.
We also reviewed leaked strategy and documents that appear to lay out the Oath Keepers’ plans for growth and reinvention — including forging tighter ties with law enforcement and building rapport with the Boy Scouts. Efforts to reach Kinch through the Oath Keepers website, emails, Signal, LinkedIn, and Venmo have not been successful.
Who Is Bobby Kinch?
Kinch is in his mid-fifties. He has a salt-and-pepper goatee, and a preference for trucker hats and hoodies. His brown eyes flare intently as he discusses his views on politics. In a February 2024 podcast with the Modern Frontiersman, Kinch discussed how he served in the Air Force during the first Gulf War era, and was ultimately stationed near Las Vegas to work on the F-117 Nighthawk stealth-fighter-jet program.
Kinch recalled leaving the military in 1993 and getting hired as a Las Vegas cop, serving until 2016. In Vegas, Kinch became notorious for a series of inflammatory posts on Facebook, including one in which he posted: “Let’s just get this over! Race war, Civil, Revolution? Bring it! I’m about as fed up as a man (American, Christian, White, Heterosexual) can get!” In another post citing the decayed “morale fabric” of the country, Kinch wrote: “I wanna call it! GAME ON! I think we need a cleansing!”
The posts were reportedly written in late 2013 but made public in early 2015 by the Las Vegas Sun. In comments to the Sun, Kinch insisted, “I didn’t call for a race war,” adding that it “flies in the face of common sense” to interpret his comments that way. He added of anyone who saw racism in his posts: “That’s pretty retarded.”
After the newspaper expose, Kinch was briefly put on leave, according to a federal lawsuit against the Las Vegas PD that Kinch filed in 2016. The suit centered on a series of subsequent transfers to less-desirable, no-overtime positions, and alleged retaliation, barred under the Civil Rights Act. Kinch sought damages for “fear, emotional distress, humiliation and/or embarrassment.” Prior to the controversy, Kinch had worked in robbery/homicide, but was transferred out of that division, the lawsuit says, after being told by a supervisor that he “could not be the one to find the bloody glove” — a reference to the key evidence in the O.J. Simpson murder case. That comment, the lawsuit insisted, “falsely implied that Kinch could not work on cases with African American suspects.”
The suit from Kinch was later dismissed for procedural reasons. He said on the podcast that he retired in 2016 and, “I ain’t looked back,” because he could no longer “recognize law enforcement” his “beloved profession.” Reflecting his departure from the force, Kinch said: “I was cancel culture before cancel culture was cool.”
Kinch told the podcast host that the public cloud over his departure no longer bothers him: “I just don’t give a shit what they call me.” He added that, with that freedom, “you become dangerous in the way that they don’t want you to become dangerous. That means that you organize and you talk to your fellow citizens.”
Kinch then dropped a reference to the Revolutionary War, and pubs in Pennsylvania where the patriot movement of that day hatched a plan to overthrow the British. “This whole podcast is the virtual taverns,” Kinch said, “It is the Tun Tavern of 2024.”
How Did Kinch Become an Oath Keepers Leader?
After leaving the LVPD, Kinch moved to the mountains of southwestern Utah, where he soon hooked up with the Oath Keepers and quickly rose to become the “XO” or executive officer of the Utah state branch, Kinch said on the podcast.
The Oath Keepers recruit military veterans and law enforcement, appealing to a patriotic sense of duty. However the paramilitary group has long been steeped in conspiracy. Those who join the group (then and now) commit to a list of ten “orders we will not obey.” These start out sensibly (e.g. vowing to disobey “orders to disarm the American people”) but morph into dark fantasy, also imagining “orders to detain American citizens as ‘unlawful enemy combatants’” or to blockade American cities or to force citizens into detention camps.
Kinch described the Utah Oath Keepers as being largely self-directing and self-funded. His first interaction with Stewart Rhodes, he said, was around 2019, when the national leader asked him to scout the location of an upcoming Trump rally in Las Vegas.
When the Utah state leader later died of Covid-19 — or as Kinch dubs it, the “China war virus” — Kinch became the top dog at Rhodes’ direction, and soon earned a spot on the Oath Keepers’ national board of directors.
In the buildup to Jan. 6, Kinch told the podcaster, he was aware of the plan for Oath Keepers to go to D.C.: “What Stewart actually told me, via a phone call, he said, ‘We’re going to go there to help the police’” — in case Antifa made trouble. Kinch also said he was also aware of a plan he described blandly as to “assist the president.” Kinch said he personally balked at the expense and the potential trouble of joining Rhodes. “I did not go,” he said, adding: “Had I been the national director at the time… I would have been like, ‘Nope, we’re not fucking going to that.’”
Despite the former leader’s conviction for seditious conspiracy, Kinch said of Rhodes, “He’s a good dude.” And the chaos of Jan. 6 notwithstanding, Kinch believes the Oath Keepers were there “to do some benevolent shit.” (The many Oath Keepers doing hard time for crimes against democracy speaks loudly against such assertions.)
When Rhodes was arrested in 2022, Kinch was in a sweet spot — high enough in the Oath Keepers hierarchy to be a credible successor, but far enough from controversy to not be implicated in federal sweeps. Kinch recalled that his state organization was one of the few that had staying power in the wake of Jan. 6: “Utah was like the last man standing.” Kinch soon found himself in the hot seat, told by fellow board members, “Hey, man, you’re the president.”
Kinch felt a duty to Rhodes to keep the national organization running, but recalled that what was left of the Oath Keepers was a mess. “There was no power of attorney. Somebody ran away with all the money,” he said. “So I’m like, literally handed a steaming pile of shit here.”
Kinch said he became determined to “build this plane in flight.” The rebuild began with a new company Northbridge Patriots LLC that, as first reported by The Guardian, registered trademarks for Oath Keepers USA. Kinch’s group also launched a new national website, USAOathkeepers.com.
Kinch acknowledged he’s frequently accused of being “a fed” and sometimes thinks he’s “insane” for trying to revive the Oath Keepers brand, but insisted he’s following a Field of Dreams philosophy: If you build it, they will come. Kinch added the org has raised its standards for those it welcomes into its ranks: “Everybody goes through multiple vetting.” And he said he’s committed to honoring the law: “It only takes one dude; one knucklehead could screw up this entire organization.”
A View of “Tyranny” and Violence
Yet even as Kinch seeks to professionalize the Oath Keepers, he continues to lean into a familiar mindset about how ominous and tyrannical forces are pushing patriots to the edge — and how violence must be prepared for and, if necessary, embraced.
“When people tell me, nothing good comes out of violence, I’m like, ‘Man, do you know your American history? America, it was born out of violence,’” he told the Modern Frontiersman. Speaking on his own podcast, Time on Target, in February 2024, in an episode titled, “America Under Attack,” Kinch expanded on the theme: “I push back… when people say violence doesn’t solve anything. Violence should be the last measure. It should be the last option. I agree with that. But sometimes we have to be proactive.”
Kinch seeks to paint himself as a “conservative constitutionalist” (he believes, for example, that ”all gun laws” passed since the late 1700s “are unconstitutional”) and the Oath Keepers as a “constitutional service organization.” He touted to the Modern Frontiersman a focus on building “community preparedness teams” or the “neighborhood watch on steroids,” to be activated in case of an unspecified calamity. “They’re going to call us a militia,” he said. “They call us insurrectionists. No, man. We’re the good guys.”
The bad guys in Kinch’s view — the “enemies of our republic” — occupy positions of power. “The top echelons of all of these organizations, whether you’re talking about Department of Justice, FBI, Border Patrol… all of them are compromised,” he said during a March 2024 episode of Time on Target, titled “A Message to Oath Takers.”
“This tyranny that has taken over — it’s treasonous,” he said. “We need to start calling it what it is. We don’t have very much time left.”
In Kinch’s view, the country in 2024 was on the verge of an explosion. “America is that balloon, and we’re getting close to popping,” he said, asking: “Are we hours? Are we days? Are we months away from the end of our country.” (Here, Kinch’s views do not seem to have evolved much from his controversial posts as a Las Vegas cop a decade ago. He concluded his infamous “Let’s just get this over!” Facebook post by writing: “It’s obviously come to a boiling point! I say “FUCK IT”! I’m ready now!”)
In Kinch’s perspective, “Everybody’s preparing for the inevitable.” He referred to ominous, unspecified impending catastrophes. “When the lights go out and they don’t come on. Bad things are happening. Bad things are happening very quickly. Within just a matter of hours to just a couple days, bad things start to happen.”
Oath Keepers, he has described, are there to “draw a line in the sand” against tyranny, and to promote communication: “Talking is a hell of a lot better than the alternative, and the alternative is so close. I mean, we’re so close to the alternative. Because once the conversation stops, the fighting begins, and we don’t want that.”
Kinch leans hard into Revolutionary War metaphors. “We’re in that 1775 moment. We really are. And you had to get a 1775 remember, to get a 1776 — you had to have that,” he told the Modern Frontiersman. Kinch added darkly of government authorities: “If they’re doing their job, then the citizens won’t ever have to worry about ever doing anything kinetic.”
Has the temperature been lowered by the election of Trump? Posting on X the day after the election, Kinch referred to the result as “saving the [r]epublic.”
Leaked Strategy Docs: “Youth Programs”
The Denial of Distributed Secrets cache comes from the man identified in ProPublica as the “mole” — and the documents, photos, chat-logs, and videos are consistent with the account detailed in that publication. The files include, for example, dozens of photographs from the inside of Kinch’s high-mountain Utah residence, and show law enforcement plaques engraved with his name.
The leaked files include a pair of meeting and strategy documents from 2023. The documents are branded with the “Oath Keepers Utah” logo. Rolling Stone sent these documents to Kinch over Signal with an invitation to discuss them and did not hear back. A similar email to an address listed on the Oath Keepers’ national website bounced back. An inquiry sent to the group via a messaging portal on the site did not receive a response.
The documents are consistent with one another. One reflects the minutes from a Feb. 2023 “leadership meeting.” The second is a “Strategic Plan” from March of that year. The roster of leaders named in the first document, for example, is consistent with more-detailed descriptions of leadership functions and roles laid out in the second document. The minutes list Kinch as both the “State and National Leader” of the Oath Keepers. The Strategic Plan details Kinch’s Utah role as “Overall CEO,” direction setter, and “Visionary.” His number two is referred to as the “XO” — the same term Kinch used for himself in that position.
The leadership meeting minutes are, by turns, mundane and revealing — demonstrating for example that the Utah chapter had dozens of members who had failed to support the group financially. It says that “40 of our 75 Utah State OK Members have NOT submitted their annual dues,” adding a threat to promptly kick out freeloaders. The same document notes that the Utah chapter continued to have outsized influence in the broader organization, counting four members on the ten-member national board of directors.
The Strategic Plan is more extensive, running 19 pages, and offers a mix of state and national record-keeping. Among 2022 achievements it celebrates: “We survived!” The plan touts under an “ethics” subheading: “We transitioned to a professional organization, with clear standards of conduct. We exited those who don’t meet those standards, and implemented strict vetting processes.”
The document reveals that in 2023 there was still a need to have a contingency “Rebranding Strategy” or “Ejection Seat” if it should come to pass that “National OK is designated a DT organization.” (DT in this context appears to be shorthand for a federal designation of “domestic terrorism.”)
A line graph included in the strategy document reveals both state and national membership goals, with the state chapter seeking to have 1,000 members by 2025 — part of 100,000 hoped-for members nationally. The growth goals were exponential: projecting 5,000 state members and 500,0000 national members by 2027. (The group’s present membership numbers are not clear.)
Under “Areas of Development” the strategy document underscores a push to ally the Oath Keepers with law enforcement officers or “LEOs” and right-wing politicos. It reads: “Need to continue to expand our LEO relationships and mutual support” and “Need to expand our relationships with political leaders at all levels (local, County, State).”
The strategy documents reveal an effort to be more welcoming — reflecting a desire to “include and engage family into our organization.”
The goals also include “Recruiting of younger… persons.” And some of the targets are young indeed: The document highlights a need for “Community outreach programs. (Boy scouts, public training, events, youth involvement).” The line chart reveals a strategic goal for the coming years, shorthanded as: “Established youth programs.”
Yet this push for a more family-friendly organization contrasts with a section on training objectives that lists a bounty of paramilitary, combat medicine, and survival skills including, “Mission Planning”; “Tactical Skills”; “Room Clearing”; “Hand to Hand”; “Drone Operations”; “Stop the Bleed”; “Casualty Combat Care”; “Medical Evac Procedures”; “Trapping and Foraging”; “Interaction with Law Enforcement”; and “Shoot/No Shoot Scenarios.”
The strategy doc also mentions “getting active in politics.”
This is consistent with the way Kinch described his goal for the Oath Keepers on the Modern Frontiersman podcast: “Let’s say you’re running for office. I don’t care if you’re running for school board or president,” he said. “I would really like this organization to be the gold standard for — hey, instead of going to the NRA, come to the Oath Keepers!”