The fact that Washington state legislative officials have been sitting on the long-awaited investigative report for two weeks on Rep. Matt Shea’s activities in empowering the far right, uttering nary a peep, was already a sign that whatever it contained would be explosive. No one, however, was quite prepared for just how bad the report, released Thursday afternoon, actually turned out to be.
Shea, the report found, engaged in domestic terrorism against the United States as part of his activities. It focused particularly on his activities during the run up to the January 2016 armed standoff between federal agents and a faction of “Patriot” militiamen led by Ammon Bundy at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
“Representative Shea, as a leader in the Patriot Movement, planned, engaged in and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States,” the report reads. “In one conflict Representative Shea led covert strategic pre-planning in advance of the conflict.”
Shea, who is the second-most senior member of the Washington House Republican Caucus but was demoted earlier this year, was promptly denounced by Washington Republican leaders, who urged him to resign. “Rep. Matt Shea has been suspended from any role in the House Republican Caucus,” tweeted House GOP Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox of Puyallup. “He should resign. He cannot use House Republican staff, he cannot meet with the caucus, his office will be moved.”
Good to Wilcox’s word, the GOP caucus had removed Shea’s image and name from its website on Thursday afternoon. Shea has so far declined to respond to press queries. Shea had declined to participate in the investigation, led by an independent firm overseen by a former FBI agent, the Rampart Group.
In addition to Shea’s participation in the Malheur standoff, the report cited two other armed standoffs in which the state House member had played significant roles:
- In April 2014 at Bunkerville, Nevada, when he had participated in protests against the federal government and Bureau of Land Management led by rancher Cliven Bundy, mainly after an armed standoff on April 14 had nearly erupted into bloodshed. Shea was a leading figure in the parade of far-right politicos who made appearances at Bundy’s ranch afterward.
- The much more brief, and less reported, incident in August 2015 in Priest River, Idaho, involving a veteran who suffered a stroke and was deemed by healthcare professionals no longer eligible to possess firearms; when a Veterans Administration employee was scheduled to appear at his home to inspect and remove the man’s guns, Shea and a host of other “Patriot” movement figures showed up en masse, heavily armed, to prevent any such removal. The VA backed down. Shea, the report notes, was prepared for violence at the scene and expected a protracted standoff.
Officials from the Spokane area have previously asked state Republicans to remove Shea from his seat. The focus of their ire has been Shea’s ongoing affiliations with the secessionist “Liberty” movement that seeks to create a new, militia-friendly state run by “Patriots,” along with his apparent participation in the online surveillance of his political enemies.
Shea had encouraged running “background checks” on liberal activists, and he loved to organize paramilitary “Christian” training in rural areas for boys and young men. More recently, he has compiled dossiers on his political opponents and even conducted a blacklist of people within his own network he suspected of being informants.
Shea’s online chats discussing this surveillance included exchanges about violent attacks on his critics and other “nonbelievers.” Shea also authored a text calling for a “biblical war” in order to create a “Christian” state in which anyone resisting their rule could be put to death.
Shea has been deeply involved with a radical Christian nationalist sect based in the tiny northeastern Washington town of Marble, whose members practice paramilitary techniques in the deep woods there, partially in preparation for the formation of their new state, part of a longer-term “American Redoubt” plan to form a “Patriot”-run homeland.
The proposed new state—dubbed “Liberty”—is essentially apocalyptic in nature. Shea and his fellow Liberty State advocates see it as a necessary preparation for when the rest of the world falls apart. They’ve been actively promoting it in neighboring counties.
As reporter Leah Sottile has documented extensively, the northeastern Washington community of Marble—dominated by a single Dominionist Christian church that at one time was affiliated with the racist Christian Identity movement—is the chief nexus of the Liberty State organizing. Much of it—with Shea’s avid participation—has entailed making preparations for violence with guns and other weapons. “Their whole thing is, ‘The world is evil and the government is evil’,” a longtime Marble resident told Sotille. “[They want] to get back to Puritan America.”
She described how Shea led workshops for young campers: “An exercise in field skills for youth, including (but not limited to): field strip and reassemble assigned weapon; orienteering, field dressing wounds, following orders, PT, shooting skill, etc.” He titled his after-dinner session “Going Underground.”
