(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The tech publication Wired reported Thursday that the Three Percenter, or III%er, militia is again proliferating on Facebook ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Three Percenters are a national network of militias, the name being a reference to the fact that only about 3% of colonists took up arms against King George in the American Revolution. The Three Percenters were involved in both the Whitmer kidnap plot and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
However, what Wired didn’t mention in its report is that the Three Percenters were heavily infiltrated by the FBI. In fact, the FBI used the Three Percenters as a front group in the Whitmer plot—going so far as to have its informants run fake III%er Facebook groups.
I mean if you’re dumb enough to participate in any of these fed post operations, you only have yourself to blame at this point. https://t.co/YT9hVSjYba
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 2, 2024
The FBI’s creation of Three Percenter Facebook pages was revealed during the first Whitmer trial in 2022.
Defense attorney Christopher Gibbons, who represented militia “ringleader” Adam Fox, said during the trial that FBI informant Steve Robeson created the Facebook page of the Michigan Three Percenters.
According to Gibbons, Robeson announced on the Three Percenters’ Facebook page that Fox had become the leader of the Michigan branch in June 2020. It was around that time that Fox became active with the Wolverine Watchmen, the group associated with the alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer.
Fox was made administrator of the Michigan Three Percenters’ Facebook page created by the FBI informants, Gibbons said.
“He got that Facebook page courtesy of the federal government,” the attorney said.
After being made administrator of the Facebook page, Gibbons said, Fox received a message from another FBI informant named “Mark.” Fox then attended a militia training event in Munith, Michigan, on June 28, 2020, Gibbons said.
The alleged plot escalated from there, until Fox was arrested along with Barry Croft, Daniel Harris, Brandon Caserta, Ty Garbin, and Kaleb Franks in October 2020.
After the arrests, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bragged about alerting the FBI to the Whitmer plot—apparently unaware that his company was alerting the FBI to its own informants.
October 28, 2020. Zuckerberg testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee.
Facebook worked closely with the FBI to stop an FBI kidnapping plot. Bravo. pic.twitter.com/5ZGctAYtch
— MAZE (@mazemoore) April 10, 2022
More recently, The Intercept reported that FBI informant Jenny Plunk was also involved in creating the fake Michigan Three Percenters.
“FBI informant, Jenny Plunk, created a private Facebook group called ‘Michigan Patriot III%ers.’ (The FBI classifies Three Percenters as a domestic terrorism threat.),” The Intercept reported in March.
“The Facebook group’s first members were Plunk and Robeson, both on the FBI’s payroll, and Fox and his girlfriend, Amanda Keller.”
But none of that is mentioned in Wired’s article, which instead fearmongered over an apparent resurgence in extremism.
“After lying low for several years in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot on January 6, militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook—with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them,” Wired reported.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
