Investigating Matthew Trewhella, the Far-Proper Wisconsin Pastor — ProPublica

Within the fall of 2022, Phoebe Petrovic, an investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and a member of ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community, seen a pastor and his church showing in native information protection for his or her anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Wanting nearer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling historical past. And digging even deeper, she seen an untold story: his broader affect on trendy Republican politics. His rise helps illustrate the rising energy of the Christian proper within the Republican celebration. Right here, Petrovic describes how she reported the story and what she discovered.

What had been the important thing takeaways out of your reporting?

• A couple of many years in the past, Trewhella was often known as a militant anti-abortion activist. At the moment, he’s acquired a unique status: thought chief on the far proper, more and more welcomed by Republicans.
• Trewhella helped to rehabilitate his status via his 2013 self-published guide, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which makes use of a Sixteenth-century Protestant doctrine to argue that authorities officers have a God-given proper and obligation to defy legal guidelines, insurance policies or court docket opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” below “the regulation of God.”
• He’s preached this doctrine to county Republican events and native teams throughout the nation, even to the Nationwide Sheriffs’ Affiliation, a preeminent regulation enforcement group.
• His guide has influenced Second Modification sanctuary resolutions. A minimum of 10 measures throughout the nation discuss with lesser magistrates. One of many earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described studying Trewhella’s guide as a “turning level” for him.
• A distinguished booster of debunked election conspiracy claims is utilizing Trewhella’s guide to disrupt future elections.

How does Trewhella match into the election? What does he say about his work?

• Within the forged of characters who may affect the upcoming election, Trewhella is just not rallying crowds the identical approach as Steve Bannon, the previous Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founding father of the conservative scholar group Turning Level USA. Trewhella is extra behind the scenes, offering a non secular justification for some far-right insurance policies and causes.
• Trewhella says that he promotes nonviolence. However after an activist killed an abortion supplier in 1993, he signed a doc describing the homicide of those docs as “justifiable.”
• In a short interview, I requested Trewhella about his reputational shift over the many years. He responded: “Most individuals will all the time solely care about three issues in life: me, myself and I. … It’s solely due to their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they’d suppose somebody like me is an extremist. That’s my reply.”
• Trewhella didn’t reply to over a dozen makes an attempt to arrange a second interview. He didn’t reply written questions by e-mail and refused a licensed letter containing them.

What did consultants let you know about Trewhella?

• Frederick Clarkson, a senior analysis analyst at Political Analysis Associates, which research threats to democracy and human rights, has tracked Trewhella for many years. Clarkson mentioned, “All of these county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who’re entertaining these items, they’re placing individuals’s lives and the whole thing of civil order in danger by taking part in footsie with Matt Trewhella.”
• One other extremism researcher, Devin Burghart, mentioned, “I feel that the general public must know that he’s a harmful theocrat, who would essentially alter the US in irreparable ways in which would hurt many, together with girls, individuals of colour and the LGBTQ neighborhood.” Burghart is president of the Institute for Analysis and Schooling on Human Rights, which tracks the far proper.

What are some particulars that didn’t make it into the story?

• Trewhella has given sermons about violence, saying that pacifism is “heresy” and that “violence is a device.” After the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, he gave a sermon titled “A Gathering of Patriots” during which he mentioned, “Tyrants should be confronted with pressure or violence at instances as a result of that’s the solely option to defeat them and to trigger their hurt and their injustice to others to cease.”
• Timothy Bachleitner, a member of Trewhella’s church, is the chair of the Republican Celebration of Fond du Lac County. Reached by cellphone, Bachleitner mentioned he obtained Trewhella’s blessing earlier than looking for the place and that he has introduced the doctrine of the lesser magistrates into his function.
• Trewhella is concentrated on counties. He organized a convention referred to as “County earlier than Nation” with the aim of “increasing God’s Kingdom via Christian localism.”

This story took lots of analysis. What else do you wish to share about this topic?

Some Republican operatives in Wisconsin questioned why we had been doing this story. They mentioned Trewhella was previous information from the ’90s. That’s not what our reporting confirmed. We discovered him cited by county commissioners, state lawmakers and former Trump administration officers, all previously a number of years. In my dwelling state of Wisconsin, the Republican Celebration of Waukesha County, the guts of the state’s Republican politics, has invited Trewhella to talk twice and promotes his teachings and guide on its web site, though its leaders downplayed the hyperlink when requested for remark.

“I simply can’t think about that they’d assist this particular person,” mentioned Invoice Kruziki, a Republican former sheriff in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. “You’ll be able to quote me on this: I feel it’s a disgrace they try this.”

The reporting course of itself was probably the most attention-grabbing I’ve had. One in all my first steps entailed sending information requests to native officers who served in areas the place Trewhella had given displays. Inside days, Trewhella had obtained a duplicate of the request and shared it on his social media profile and e-mail e-newsletter, writing, “The depraved are trembling!”

And within the closing levels of the reporting, I requested an interview with Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, who cited Trewhella when defending his calls to disregard federal regulation that violated “God’s phrase.” An aide denied my request and included in his e-mail “a short gospel exhortation,” urging me and my readers “to show from sin, run to Christ, belief Him, and luxuriate in fellowship with him perpetually.”