Opening the Wednesday AP Morning Wire email, I took a look at the top article, Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list, by Alanna Durkin Richer and Michael Kunzelman.
Sure enough, South Dakota state representative Phil Jensen, R-Rapid City, makes an appearance:
. . . Among the elected officials whose name appears on the membership lists is South Dakota state Rep. Phil Jensen, who won a June Republican primary in his bid for reelection. Jensen told the AP he paid for a one-year membership in 2014 but never received any Oath Keepers’ literature, attended any meetings or renewed his membership.
Jensen said he felt compelled to join because he “believed in the oath that we took to support the US Constitution and to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic.” He wouldn’t say whether he now disavows the Oath Keepers, saying he doesn’t have enough information about the group today.
“Back in 2014, they appeared to be a pretty solid conservative group, I can’t speak to them now,” he said. . .
On Wednesday morning, the Sioux Falls Argus framed the AP article under a different headline, South Dakota Rep. Phil Jensen named as member on Oath Keepers list.
This isn't the first time Jensen's scored earned media from his connection with Oath Keepers. In the fall of 2021, the nexus was reported in national and state media, picking up on a Rolling Stone article.
And it's stayed news, as a July 2022 article (updated in August) by Kent Bush in the Rapid City Journal Rep. Phil Jensen confirms 1-year membership in Oath Keepers, 8 years ago, demonstrates:
With two dozen members of the organization charged in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection attempt at the U.S. Capitol, the Oath Keepers' former spokesman, Jason Tatenhove, was a star witness for the House Jan. 6 Commission this week.
One local legislator was tied to the Oath Keepers when Rolling Stone magazine received a leaked list of Oath Keepers members last year. Republican Phil Jensen confirmed Wednesday that he did sign up for membership in 2014, but that was the extent of his membership activities.
"I wish I had a more exciting story for you," the District 33 representative said. "In 2014 I was sitting at my desk in the Senate chambers and I had read some information about the Oath Keepers. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the South Dakota Constitution, and it seemed like a good group of guys to belong to."
Jensen said at the time, the membership consisted mainly of law enforcement officers, former military members and lawmakers, among others. He paid a small fee online to become a member.
"I never received any literature from them, any emails, any bumper stickers, any trinkets," Jensen said. He said he never paid to continue his membership which would have lapsed in 2015.
The Oath Keepers on Jan. 6, 2021 acted as a paramilitary militia and are accused of helping plan an attack on the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the legal recording of Electoral College votes by Congress. About a dozen members have been charged with seditious conspiracy due to their actions on that day and several have pleaded guilty to the charges.
Jensen said those activities aren't part of his nature. He even filed as a conscientious objector when he was drafted during the Vietnam War.
"I was drafted," Jensen said. "And I filed for conscientious objector and I was going through a process of looking for alternative service. And then Nixon cancelled the drafting power before I got established."
Jensen didn't criticize the recent actions of the group but he has said that he wants everything that happened at the Capitol that day to be revealed. He said the group in its current form is very different than the one that he signed up for eight years ago.
"I take my oath seriously and it seemed like a group I would want to belong to," Jensen said. "I never paid to renew my membership or attended any activities at all."
The measure failed — and even a fellow Republican blasted it as “a mean, nasty, hateful, vindictive bill.” In an interview with the Rapid City Journal, Jensen insisted the bill was a defense of “free speech and private-property rights.” He then doubled down, arguing the free market should be relied on to counter discrimination: “If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance,” he said, “the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve Blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them.” (This remark drew a rebuke from the state’s then-governor: “I found his comments to be completely out of line with South Dakota values,” said Republican Dennis Daugaard.)
In light of this controversy, the Rapid City newspaper ran a headline touting Jensen as “South Dakota’s most conservative lawmaker.” That same year, it appears, Jensen added another appellation to his political résumé: Oath Keeper.
The Oath Keepers are an extremist militia group that challenges the authority of the federal government. The organization asks its members to swear to a 10-point oath, steeped in conspiratorial thinking, insisting they’ll stand up against government tyranny that the group imagines is fast approaching. The points start out fairly benign: “1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.” But they quickly lose contact with reality, as in point 6: “We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.” The group’s members often show up as armed vigilantes in times of strife, notably at the 2014 standoff at the Bundy Ranch and during unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Nearly two dozen of the group’s members have been indicted for involvement in the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. . . .
Heckova introduction. And there's this about Jensen:
The vast majority of alleged Oath Keepers in these rolls signed up with private emails and without any details that would readily identify their employers. The record for Jensen is markedly different. It lists a state legislative email address, and his name appears with his honorific at the time, “Senator Phil Jensen.” (Jensen has served in both chambers of the state Legislature; he is currently representative of District 33, which includes part of Rapid City.) The record appears to show that Jensen signed up for an annual membership in 2014; the database does not indicate his current membership status.
Jensen did not respond to phone and email requests to discuss his appearance on the alleged Oath Keeper rolls or his current affiliation with the group (UPDATE: Jensen has responded to Rolling Stone‘s reporting, telling local news station KEVN that he signed up with the Oath Keepers in 2014. The legislator said he was not active with the group, but saw nothing to be ashamed of in the affiliation, adding he believes the group has been unfairly maligned.) . . .
Jensen does not appear to have moderated his political orientation in recent years. He has denounced Covid-19 public-health policies like mask requirements. And in a challenge to federal authority, he recently signed on to a resolution “urging the overruling of any attempt by the Biden administration to implement a nationwide Covid-19 vaccine or testing mandate on business.”
In a February opinion piece for the Rapid City Journal, Jensen advanced notions cut from the same ideological cloth as the Oath Keepers: “We have come to a time in history where we are seeing the constitutional rights this country was founded on cast aside in the name of safety,” he warned. “We are seeing resolutions, rules and mandates, presented, passed and executed that undermine our inalienable rights.” Jensen inveighed against “coercion and force … being called upon once again to legislate our compliance.”
The scrutiny of the database has been an ongoing effort. Dickinson reported:
In recent weeks, a transparency group called Distributed Denial of Secrets released a huge trove of purported Oath Keeper records, emails, and chat logs. The group provided Rolling Stone access to a database of membership records of more than 38,000 alleged Oath Keepers. Other media outlets, reporting on the same purported membership rolls — including USA Today, Oregon Public Broadcasting, and The Gothamist — have identified dozens of Oath Keeper members of the military and law enforcement. Many of those identified have admitted to their affiliation with the group, with some clarifying they are no longer active members. The Oath Keepers did not respond to questions about the leak.
But the AP article notes why this database has gained importance:
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.
It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.
The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the U.S. It’s especially problematic for public servants to be associated with extremists at a time when lies about the 2020 election are fueling threats of violence against lawmakers and institutions. . . .
More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers — including Rhodes — have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Rhodes and four other Oath Keeper members or associates are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weekslong plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers say that they are innocent and that there was no plan to attack the Capitol.
While the Jensen's association isn't entirely breaking news, the importance of that news grows more important as the trial opens.
Photo: Phil Jensen. Via Tom Lawrence's February article at the Daily Beast, S.D. Pol’s Black History Month Resolution Sparks Outrage.
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