According to federal charges, Kelly and Connie Meggs are members of the Oath Keepers militia who used the chaos surrounding the Capitol riot to enter the building in an organized ‘pile’. The Florida husband and wife couple dressed in camouflage can be seen on security footage entering the Capitol illegally and walking through the building with other Oath Keepers.
Kelly Meggs is, according to prosecutors, a leader of the Oath Keepers nicknamed “OK Gator.” Both Meggs are charged with conspiracy for their alleged roles in the riot.
To sympathetic readers of the right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit, however, the Meggs are humble farmers unfairly kidnapped by the federal government and forced to deal with some loose donkeys. In a Tuesday post on Gateway Pundit, blogger Jim Hoft claimed that the Meggs are about to lose their farm after an FBI raid in which the FBI accidentally freed their donkeys.
“During the arrest, the FBI lost all their donkeys in the area,” Hoft writes.
The donkeys were later returned to the farm. The solution to this injustice for Hoft’s far-right audience, according to his blog: donate tens of thousands of dollars to the Meggs.
The rioters’ stories have made a lot of money on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site that has become a go-to option for right-wing figures who would likely be banned from more mainstream sites like GoFundMe. The Meggs family raised more than $ 80,000 on Tuesday, while Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson’s family raised more than $ 160,000.
Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers indicted in the aftermath of the January 6 riot have had a public relations blitz in the right-wing media, trying to recast themselves as victims of over-government and a criminal FBI. They also collect a lot of money along the way.
That PR push has extended to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer when she tried to break into the Speaker’s Lobby during the riot. Terrell Roberts, a lawyer for Babbitt’s family, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on March 12, claiming that the police should have arrested Babbitt.
“We should have a statement explaining why they had to shoot this lady,” Roberts said.
Roberts declined to comment.
Much of the laudatory coverage of the riot suspects has come from The Gateway Pundit, a popular far-right blog that regularly promotes hoaxes. Gateway Pundit founder Hoft, who occupies a prominent place in the right-wing media to be invited to the Trump White House in 2019, has published several stories promoting fundraisers for the riot suspects.
Proud boy Christopher Worrell is said to have shot pepper spray on law enforcement officials at the start of the riot, according to a federal indictment, after driving from Florida to Washington in a van with a crew of other Proud Boys. According to prosecutors, Worrell wore a tactical vest and earpiece during the riot. When law enforcement officers raided his home in East Naples, Florida, they found it filled with Proud Boys equipment, including challenge coins representing several chapters of the men’s far-right group.
In contrast, the Gateway Pundit article on Worrell’s arrest makes no mention of Proud Boys. The blog post claims that Worrell was “arrested by heavily armed Feds with tankers,” an unusual way of describing armored trucks.
While Kelly and Connie Meggs have been embraced by right-wing blog readers, Harrelson, another Florida Oath Keeper who reportedly entered the Capitol with them, may have had the best reception.
Harrelson, facing a count of conspiracies and three other allegations, is said to have planned a riot with other Oath Keepers in meetings using aliases like “Gator 6” or, sometimes, simply by using his own name. According to his indictment, Harrelson was caught on video illegally entering the Capitol next to the Meggses.
Like other supporters of arrested riot suspects, Harronson’s wife Angel Harrelson appeared on The Gateway Pundit alleging that her husband was being treated unfairly and that FBI agents destroyed her home while executing a search warrant.
“They escorted me outside my house,” she said. ‘I was angry that my things would be thrown all over the place and they would make a huge mess.
In a post on The Gateway Pundit, Angel Harrelson claimed that the Oath Keepers “are made up of a diverse group of people.”
“One of the worst lies being spread about them is that they are somehow ‘white supremacists’,” Harrson’s wife wrote. “That is insulting and ridiculous. I am Cajun, so my ancestors and relatives are both Black and Indian. “