A pickup truck parked on the day of the riot on Jan. 6 and carrying a Three Percenter militia sticker on the day of the riot on Jan. 6 belongs to the husband of U.S. President Mary Miller of Illinois, who killed Adolf Hitler had approved the day before.
Researchers on Twitter first noted that the Ford pickup truck with the right-wing militia emblem was parked on the Capitol site in footage posted on social media and taken by CBS News.
The presence of a vehicle with a militia sticker so close to the Capitol, which is not accessible to normal vehicle traffic, has raised questions about how it got there – and whether it belongs to one of the hundreds of suspects who was involved in the deadly riot.
But in an email to The Daily Beast, Chris Miller, the husband of Rep. Miller, and a member of the Illinois House of Representatives admitted that the truck belonged to him, even though he had pleaded ignorance about the militia group.
” A friend of the army gave me a slice. Thought it was a cool sticker. “It decreased due to a negative bar,” Miller wrote in an email late Thursday. He says he ‘never was a member of the militia, and’ knew nothing of 3% before fake news started this fake story and read about it. ‘
A request for comment to the US Rep. Miller’s office was not returned before publication.
The link between the truck and Rep. Miller was first reported on Twitter on Thursday by the @capitolhunters account, which organizes research on rioters seen in the January 6 Capitol riot of a large community of volunteers who watched thousands of hours of footage.
A pickup truck with the same make, model, color and Illinois number as the one at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is also visible in a July 2020 photo that Mary Miller is carrying for Congress banners during a fourth Julie Parade in Illinois. The same day, Rep. Miller’s Facebook page posted a photo of what looked like the same truck with the same Trump-Pence and Mary Miller for the congressional banners attached to the same PVC pipe frame while campaigning in the towns of Mattoon, Sullivan fed. Herrick, and Moweaqua.
Previously, the Millers proudly posted photos of the same model of the Ford pickup truck, often decorated with the same stickers – such as ‘herd holder’ and Guns Save Life, a website affiliated with an Illinois-based gun rights group – as the truck at the Capitol drilled on January 6th. In at least one case, before Chris Miller’s election to the State House in 2018, the truck in question had a different license plate.
The couple appeared with the truck during campaign events, sometimes with the vehicle pasted on their faces or posters of ‘taxpayers are important.’ The license plate of the vehicle at the Capitol on January 6 – registered in Illinois, but with a drawing of the State Capitol Building – appears to be a design reserved for Illinois politicians, such as Chris Miller, who in 2019 took office.
The Three Percenter sticker was perhaps a relatively new addition to the car, as it had not been visible on the images since the summer.
Mary Miller, a Republican who was elected in November last year, is perhaps best known for speaking at a Moms for America rally in front of the Capitol the day before the riots. “Hitler was right about one thing: whoever has the youth has the future,” she told the crowd. She later apologized for the remarks, saying: “some are deliberately trying to twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs.”
Militia groups have received new attention from law enforcement, given the number of members arrested since January 6 and charged with riotous crimes. Robert Gieswein, a suspected rioter identified by The Daily Beast, is visible in footage of the first rioters who, according to an FBI statement filed in the court case against him, appear to be Capitol ‘connected to the radical militia group known as the Three Percentages’.
The group, first formed in 2008, is part of a loose network of “anti-government extremists” comparing their crusade against the US government to that of patriots from the Revolutionary War, according to the Anti Defamation League. Their name comes from the false claim that only 3 percent of American colonists fought in the war.
Ties between militia groups and Congress were also scrutinized after some lawmakers suggested their colleagues played a role in the riot. Rep. Steve Cohen pointed out that US Representative Lauren Boebert led a “major” tour of the Capitol shortly before the riot. Boebert said she did not hold any tours for anyone outside her family at the time, and there is still no evidence that any of the rioters benefited from inside aid.
However, Boebert was criticized for her ties to militia groups after introducing herself at a gun judge rally in December 2019 where rallyers flashed Three Percenter signatures.