The Oath Keepers — the armed, anti-government vigilante group known for popping up at the Ferguson protests and elsewhere — has told Kim Davis’ legal counsel that they would be willing to “protect” the anti-gay marriage Kentucky clerk from being detained by the U.S. Marshals Service. According to Right Wing Watch, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has said he is already on his way to Kentucky.
In a statement posted to the Oath Keepers’ website, Rhodes claims that the federal judge who ordered Davis’ detention after she refused to issue gay marriage licenses “grossly overstepped his bounds and violated Mrs Davis’ due process rights, and in particular her right to a jury trial.”
Prior to Davis’ release from detention Tuesday, the Oath Keepers planned to picket the home of the judge, U.S. District Judge David Bunning, Right Wing Watch reported. It is unclear if she will be detained again if she gets in the way of her clerks’ office issuing the licenses, as her lawyers have suggested, when she returns to work.
“We must stand against this. And so we will protect her and prevent it from happening again,” Rhodes said in the statement.
