A pickup truck parked at the United States Capitol with a sticker from the Three Percenter militia on the January 6 riot day belongs to the husband of Illinois deputy Mary Miller, who approved Adolf Hitler the day before.
Researchers on Twitter first noticed the Ford pickup truck with the decal of the far-right militia parked on Capitol grounds in images posted on social media and obtained by CBS News.
The presence of a vehicle with a militia decal so close to the Capitol, inaccessible to normal vehicle traffic, raised questions about how it got there – and whether it belonged to any of the hundreds of suspects involved in the deadly mutiny.
But in an email to The Daily Beast, Chris Miller, husband of Rep. Miller and a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, admitted that the truck belonged to him even when he claimed ignorance about the militia group.
“An army friend gave me a decal. I thought it was a cool decal. I retired because of a negative pub, ”Miller wrote in an email on Thursday. He says he “was never a member” of the militia and “did not know anything about 3% until fake news started this fake story and read about it”.
A request for comment to the office of US Representative Miller was not returned prior to publication.
The link between the truck and Rep. Miller was first reported on Twitter on Thursday by @capitolhunters says, who is organizing research on protesters seen in the Capitol riot on January 6, from a large community of volunteers analyzing thousands of hours of footage.
A pickup truck with the same make, model, color and license plate number from Illinois as the Capitol on January 6 can also be seen in a July 2020 photo carrying Mary Miller banners to Congress during a July 4 parade. in Illinois. That same day, Rep. Miller’s Facebook page posted a photo of what appeared to be the same truck with the same Trump-Pence and Mary Miller banners for Congress attached to the same PVC pipe structure as she campaigned in cities by Mattoon, Sullivan, Herrick and Moweaqua.
Previously, the Millers proudly posted photos of the same model as the Ford pickup, often with the same stickers – like “herd abandoner” and Guns Save Life, a site affiliated with an Illinois gun rights group – like the truck in the Capitol held on January 6. In at least one case, before Chris Miller was elected to the State Chamber in 2018, the truck in question had a different license plate.
The couple has shown up with that truck at campaign events, sometimes with the vehicle emblazoned on pictures of their faces or posters “The taxpayer ‘s life matters”. The vehicle license plate at the Capitol on January 6 – registered in Illinois, but with a drawing of the state capitol building – appears to be a project reserved for Illinois politicians, like Chris Miller, who took office in 2019.
The Three Percenter decal may have been a relatively new addition to the car, as it was not visible in the images this summer.
Elected last November, Mary Miller, a Republican, is perhaps best known for speaking at a “Moms for America” rally in front of the Capitol the day before the riot. “Hitler was right about one thing: whoever has youth has a future,” she told the crowd. She later apologized for the comments and said “some are intentionally trying to distort my words to mean something contrary to my beliefs”.
Militia groups have received new attention from law enforcement due to the number of members arrested and charged with riot-related crimes since January 6. Robert Gieswein, an alleged hooligan identified by The Daily Beast who is visible in images of the first hooligans to invade the Capitol, “appears to be affiliated with the radical militia group known as the Three Percent,” according to an FBI deposition filed in the court case against him.
The group, which formed for the first time in 2008, is part of a loose network of “anti-government extremists” who compare their crusade against the United States government to that of revolutionary war-era patriots, according to the Anti-Defamation League . Its name comes from the false claim that only 3% of US settlers fought in that war.
Ties between militia groups and Congress also came under greater scrutiny after some lawmakers suggested that their colleagues may have played a role in the riot. Representative Steve Cohen clearly stated that US Representative Lauren Boebert led a “big” tour of the Capitol just before the uproar. Boebert said he did not give tours to anyone outside his family at the time and there is no evidence that any of the protesters benefited from domestic help.
Boebert, however, was criticized for her links with militia groups after she posed for a photo at an arms rights rally in December 2019, where event participants made signs with the hands of three Percenter.