I would like to focus on this guy Joe Oltmann of Colorado. There are so many insurrectionists to cover, but Oltmann is free as a bird, although he was at the “command center” of the Williard Hotel in D.C. on Jan 6th. And he is still very dangerous.
Oltmann, a former digital marketing CEO from Douglas County, founded FEC United last year. He was instrumental in spreading baseless conspiracy theories alleging that Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump. On Jan. 6, he was present in what he called a “command center” of top Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani in Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel.
What is FEC?
FEC United, a new conservative political group, organized the Oct. 10 “Patriot Muster” rally in Denver’s Civic Center Park. The event turned deadly immediately after its conclusion when a private security guard hired by 9News to protect its reporters shot and killed a rally attendee who pepper sprayed him.
As the event’s name implies (“muster” means to assemble military troops), the rally was a call to action for armed supporters to gather publicly. FEC United has its own armed group called the United American Defense Force (UADF), led by former Benghazi security contractor John Tiegen. The “defense force” doesn’t use the word “militia,” but it is indistinguishable from other coordinated groups of armed civilians. The UADF is just one component of FEC United’s multi-pronged organization (FEC stand for Faith, Education & Commerce) that has ambitions to be a national political & policy membership organization for the religious right.
And Oltmann’s death threats and links to Republicans in the state of Colorado:
Conservative activist Joe Oltmann of FEC United, a Colorado group with an active and armed citizen defense wing, called this week for his “traitor” political opponents to be hanged.
“(T)wo inches off the ground, so they choke to death,” Oltmann said on his podcast, emphasizing to his co-host that he meant this literally.
Those remarks have been met with silence from Republican leaders who say they’d rather not pay attention to that sort of rhetoric. They say it doesn’t represent the party and that voters in the state don’t want to discuss the sorts of extreme ideas Oltmann, a prominent voice in favor of the unproven claim that the 2020 election was rigged in Democrats’ favor, espouses on a regular basis…
As much as she and many other GOP leaders interviewed this month by The Post say they would like to distance themselves from FEC United, the ties between it and the conservative mainstream of Colorado are substantial. A lot of what Oltmann represents — chiefly election denial and the fervent belief that the country is besieged by treasonous Democrats and phony Republicans — is popular among the conservative base. And it figures to be a potentially major factor in 2022 elections here and around the country.
Archived screengrabs of FEC United’s website show many well-known Republican officials in Colorado signed onto its “Save Colorado” pledge last year, although that pledge list no longer appears on the site. Anyone who signed the pledge and then was deemed to have broken loyalty to the group could face recall petitions, a primary election opponent, “using social media to expose your breach” and “unleashing our army of freedom fighters against you,” the site stated.
Among those who signed are at least five active or recent state lawmakers: Reps. Kim Ransom of Douglas County and Mike Lynch of Larimer County; former Reps. Richard Champion of Arapahoe County and Lori Saine of Weld County, the latter of whom is running for Congress in the new 8th District; and former state Sen. Vicki Marble of Larimer County. Also signed on were commissioners from at least five Front Range counties and Parker Mayor Jeff Toberg.
Much more than signing on to a loyalty pledge, Burton Brown, the Republican party chair, actually led FEC United last year. In sworn court depositions this fall, Oltmann and another leader of the group, Stewart Butler, testified about it, and Burton Brown has confirmed it in statements to the press. Oltmann characterized her work as “basically the foundation of what we’re doing as an organization.”
In a three-minute interview with The Post, Burton Brown said her time with the group was “very brief” but declined to say when exactly it began and ended. She said she only had a “verbal understanding” and that she never signed a contract with FEC United.
Emphasis is mine.
And as to what caught my attention to Joe Oltmann was his recent podcast interview with Jacob Chansley from prison. You may remember Chansley as the — cough — Qanon Shaman who got 41 months in prison for his part in the Jan 6th Insurrection. Seems hornhead is not the least bit sorry about what got his ass thrown in prison.
In a live interview that lasted nearly two hours on Friday, Angeli declined to discuss the details of his case with Oltmann and co-host Max McGuire. Instead, he spoke at length about topics ranging from John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the 2020 election, critical race theory, anti-vaccine sentiments, Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” the Rothschild and Bilderberg families, Chinese government surveillance and Tesla coils, which he said were a source of “infinite free clean energy” that could control the weather and lead to “the next stage of evolution.”
Asked by McGuire about his treatment by the criminal justice system, Angeli compared himself to historical figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus Christ.
“This is what every single great leader, what every pioneer of sorts, has had to go through,” Angeli said. “When you challenge a system that is so heavily corrupt, when you speak truth to power, what it does is it sends ripples throughout the world. This is part of the reason why, while I’m upset about what happened to me … at the same time, I’m doing all I can to be strong and courageous and wear the full armor of God.”
“I am whatever the country needs me to be,” he continued. “That’s part of the role of the shaman — to be the one that fights the spiritual war for the people, to be the one that shows the people the flaws within its system, within its culture, and helps them to repair those flaws.”
“It’s great to have this conversation, and break the barriers of what they’ve been saying about him,” Oltmann said after Angeli’s appearance. “He’s not crazy. He is a patriot.”
So Oltmann is praising a guy who broke into the Capitol Building and threatened Vice President Mike Pence. And while I think that Chansley has serious mental issues, he is also a dangerous asshole. The two are not mutually exclusive. And 41 months was not long enough to keep him locked up.
But Oltmann is far more dangerous, and he is free to organize thugs into a terrorist group and call for the deaths of those who oppose him.