This evening in Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs mayoral candidate and militia leader John “Tig” Tiegen will speak at an event keynoted by Matthew Trewhella, a far-right pastor who has defended murdering abortion providers as “justifiable homicide.”
Trewhella’s appearance, which FEC United’s founder Joe OItman has been promoting for weeks, comes just days after he was one of two prominent speakers to a far-right group in his home state of Wisconsin; the other was Judge Dan Kelly, a conservative who is currently running for a swing seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. In response to state and national news coverage of the two both speaking at the same event, Kelly’s campaign issued a statement disavowing Trewhella.
Extremist conspiracy group FEC United is hosting tonight’s event, Stand In The Gap, which features several other speakers in addition to Trewhella and Tiegen. Oltmann himself is speaking, as are two election fraud conspiracists: Seth Keshel and David Clements.
In a promotional video, Oltmann describes the event as the second of a two-part program, following FEC United’s “Children & Military Under Assault” panel discussion which took place last Friday and also featured Tiegen as a speaker. He was joined by a number of anti-vaccine conspiracists, several of whom also served in the military. FEC United charged $25 for regular tickets and $100 for VIP tickets to that panel discussion, while tonight’s event is free, though RSVPs are required. Oltmann also calls it a “launch event,” apparently for a “Stand in the Gap” brand, but doesn’t offer details. Trewhella isn’t just a speaker, his “Lesser Magistrate Project” is also a sponsoring organization. That entity is named after Trewhella’s book, “Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate,” an insurrectionist tract which used dubious “sovereign citizen” arguments to claim that any individual can ignore laws and law enforcement if the individual believes the law or order to be unconstitutional.
El Paso County Republican Party Chairwoman Vickie Tonkins also appeared as a panelist on the event invite. She did not reply to a Colorado Times Recorder inquiry attempting to confirm her participation in last week’s event and asking if she’s also attending tonight.
Tiegen runs the United American Defense Force, an armed militia which “is a division of FEC United,” according to an FEC United Facebook post. Reached via Facebook message, Tiegen declined to answer the Colorado Times Recorder‘s question as to whether he is aware and/or has any concerns over Trewhella’s position on murdering abortion doctors. Instead Tiegen accused the Colorado Times Recorder of defaming him, without providing any specifics:
“Are you willing to come out and condemn the lies the slander and defamation that your paper put out on me,” replied Tiegen.
Trewhella is a longtime advocate of militias as well. A 1994 news report by the Virginian-Pilot documents statements he made at a Wisconsin political convention:
“‘Our government wants to disarm us,’ Trewhella says in the video. ‘What should we do? We should do what thousands of people across this nation are doing; we should be forming militias… Churches can form militia days and teach their men how to fight…
Parents should quit teaching their children games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. We need to start blindfolding them, sitting them down on the living room floor and saying, `Now, put the weapon together.’ … This Christmas, I want you to do the most loving thing. I want you to buy your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.””
Those statements are nearly thirty years old, but Trewhella’s beliefs haven’t changed. He made another video in 2021 again calling on churches to train men in the use of firearms.
The event is taking place at Fervent Church, which run by FEC United’s own chaplain, Pastor Garrett Graupner, who is also an election conspiracist who has claimed publicly that President Biden was not legitimately elected to office. Graupner also has a history of violence according to an interview he gave to Assist News in 2007 in which he recounted dealing guns and drugs as a young man, culminating in shooting at a car full of other criminals with a machine gun.
