Ben Schreckinger is a reporter for Politico.

It was Friday night and Chris Cox was sitting at the No Name Saloon in Edgewater, Florida, planning a pro-Trump rally during Daytona Bike Week, when he looked up at the television in the bar. Protesters were clashing with Donald Trump’s supporters inside a packed Chicago arena, forcing the campaign to cancel the event and urge everyone to leave “in peace.”

“The TV comes on and there’s chaos and mayhem in Chicago and all we could do is shake our heads,” said Cox. “At that moment we couldn’t really see our role. We were in shock. But over the next couple days we heard cries from our other members. ‘Can you come to this rally? Can you come to that rally?’”


Cox decided that his 30,000-member group, “Bikers for Trump,” would no longer be just a support organization focused primarily on holding independent rallies for the Republican front-runner. It would transform into a volunteer security force, patrolling Trump’s events to identify protesters for paid security and police, forming barriers to protect Trump supporters, and playing backup to the cops as they removed unwanted attendees from the campaign’s rallies.

Within days, his bikers were working crowds at Trump events nationwide. And by last week, at a rally inside the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex, Cox’s men were assuming functions typically reserved for paid security and police – patrolling the dirt floor of the arena, snatching and tearing protesters’ signs and following close behind law enforcement officials as they dragged protesters from the arena, ready to lend a hand.

“We’ve got a lot of faith in the police,” said Cox, a former advance man for Dan Quayle who still wears a ring bearing the seal of the vice president on his right hand. “We like to see ourselves as Plan B in the case that it does get past them and they do need assistance.”

Trump supporters have been eagerly assisting police and the campaign’s security by pointing out protesters at rallies since at least January. But since mid-March, these volunteer efforts to root out demonstrators have become more organized and deliberate.

Bikers for Trump became a protective force, and it’s not alone. Another group, Lions of Trump, popped up online after Chicago to scour social media for likely protesters and expose them. Its website prominently quotes the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. At a Trump rally in Wisconsin in late March, a local Tea Party activist arrived several hours early and assisted a campaign security consultants in identifying area progressive activists, who were then removed. And Citizens for Trump, an all-purpose grassroots support group, has deployed a team scouring social media for death threats to Trump, while a handful of its members tour the country on the lookout for protesters at rallies.

Now some of these groups are preparing plans for counter-protest work in later primary states, including California, and to rally outside of the Republican convention in Cleveland. “The name of what we’re going to be doing is ‘Our Votes Matter,’” said Tim Selaty, a Tea Party activist from Texas and the founder of Citizens for Trump, of the plans for Cleveland. “It’s a little kick at Black Lives Matter and a little kick at the GOP.”

These volunteer efforts reflect the intensity of Trump’s supporters, who say their candidate and his campaign are under threat – a threat some believe comes from agitators paid by billionaire financier and funder of liberal causes, George Soros. These volunteers are injecting themselves into an already volatile situation at Trump rallies, where protesters, Trump supporters, Secret Service agents, local law enforcement and the billionaire’s private security detail have been intermingling.

While security experts warn that untrained vigilante groups could cause more harm than good, and even expose a candidate to charges of negligence in the case of violence, Trump’s campaign and paid consultants are doing little to discourage Bikers for Trump or other security volunteers.

“I immediately thought of the Rolling Stones' use of the Hells Angels to provide security and crowd control at their infamous Altamont concert!” said Steve Amitay, the executive director and general counsel of the National Association of Security Companies, of Bikers for Trump’s activities at the candidate’s events. “How did that work out?” (The 1969 concert in northern California at which members of the Hells Angels provided security ended with one 18-year-old concert-goer dead at the motorcycle club’s hands.)

“If it can be shown the Trump campaign permitted them to assume this security role, and then something bad happened involving a biker security volunteer, the Trump campaign could easily be found liable for negligence,” he said.

Chris Cox conferring with Trump's head of security, Keith Schiller, during the Harrisburg rally. | M. Scott Mahaskey

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But in Harrisburg on Thursday night, Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, warmly embraced Cox and the two conferred at least twice during the rally.

Cox, who has attended two-dozen campaign rallies and showed familiarity with multiple campaign staffers in Harrisburg, dismissed concerns about the potential for mayhem. He said his group enforces a strict code of conduct that includes nonviolence and that rogues are told to go their own way. “We’re not here to make headlines, we’re here to prevent them,” he said repeatedly.

But Cox’s code only applies to striking first. “The moment that we are assaulted the tone will definitely change,” he said. “We’re certainly not going to get punched and back down.”

On that count, Cox takes comfort in the strength of numbers: “In the event that one hair is touched on a biker, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of bikers coming out of the woodwork.”

***

Cox, a 47-year-old chainsaw carving artist from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, became national news fodder during the 2013 government shutdown, when a photo of him mowing the lawn at the Lincoln Memorial made the rounds online. California Rep. Darrell Issa recognized him on the floor of the House. Since then, he has spent time on Capitol Hill, lobbying for the Monuments Protection Act, which is co-sponsored by Issa, a Republican, and D.C. Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton, a Democrat, and was introduced last year to keep open-air memorials open during government shutdowns.

But since August, Cox has been criss-crossing the country in a beat-up old camper to organize rallies at biker bars and shows of support at campaign stops. When he runs low on cash, Cox takes his chainsaw out on the side of a road and carves logs into wood sculptures — which he then sells to passing motorists — and then continues his journey.

Hundreds of bikers rallied at one of his events in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in January, according to a local news report. In Myrtle Beach, the bikers coordinated with campaign staff to ride by and salute Trump as he arrived to speak at a local Tea Party convention. Cox organized another hundred bikers to come to a campaign rally in Tampa in February, according to another local news report. He said rallies in Homosassa, Florida, Daytona Beach and Virginia Beach in recent months have drawn hundreds of bikes.

And the campaign has taken notice. Cox has arranged for VIP tickets for members of his group — which is heavy on veterans — at several Trump campaign rallies and said that he has helped the campaign find bikers to fill the seats allotted to it for the Republican presidential debates in Houston in February and Coral Gables, Florida, in March.

Shows of support have turned into shows of force. At one campaign rally earlier this month in Albany, Cox said he brought several dozen bikers to line up in a “protective barrier” between protesters and Trump supporters in line outside. He declined to get into the specifics of exactly who he coordinated with on the campaign and how, but said the campaign is aware of his security efforts.

Citing the involvement of MoveOn.org in protesting Trump, Cox said he believes protesters are paid agitators working on behalf of Soros. This is a widespread, though unproven, belief among Trump’s supporters — inspired by Soros’ past support for MoveOn and a meeting between the Democracy Alliance, a major donor club co-founded by Soros, and some BLM leaders held last year.

Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn’s executive director of political action, dismissed that accusation. “We have not received funding from George Soros since 2004, nor are any of the peaceful protestors outside Trump events paid by MoveOn,” he said in a statement.

Cox promised that the group’s security efforts will become larger and better organized. “You’ve got to remember we’re just now shifting into this gear,” he said.

Others are too, including individuals acting, they say, out of frustration with protesters.

On March 29, Tea Party activist, Army veteran and former Illinois congressional candidate David Hale arrived several hours early to a Trump rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, anticipating violence from protesters. He brought a camera to document the expected violence – which did not materialize – and made contact with Donald Albrecht, a Trump campaign security consultant, outside the venue.

Hale said he did not know the name of the campaign official he interacted with. But Russell Beckman, a retired police detective turned law-enforcement-reform activist who was picked out by Hale after greeting fellow activists in line, identified the man as Albrecht from video shot the night before the rally. (In that video, Albrecht, in a maroon jacket, clashes with anti-Trump protesters in the lobby of the Holiday Inn and a man in a blue shirt who appears to be working with Albrecht clashes with Janesville police.) Albrecht did not respond to a request for comment.

Hale said he identified roughly eight likely protesters – a combination of people he recognized from Occupy demonstrations he had observed in the past, those he saw associating with the Occupiers at the Trump rally and those he picked out as appearing suspicious. Those suspects were then removed by campaign staff from the event space, a Holiday Inn Express and Convention Center, and the line outside.

“This is just my personal ability to identify these people because I can’t stand what they do. I can’t stand how they act. They don’t want to act like normal human beings,” Hale said. “They want to act like they can dress normal, but they’re pretty distinct … They’ll just have certain type of garb on. Normal people are just going to wear jeans and a t-shirt.”

A member of Bikers for Trump points at a protester as law enforcement officers remove him from a Donald Trump rally April 21, 2016 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. | M. Scott Mahaskey

One of the police reform activists identified by Hale was Amelia Royko Maurer. After leaving the venue, Hale later found her at a nearby gas station and told her he recognized her from other protests. “I felt scared,” said Maurer. “I rarely ever feel scared.”

Hale said it was Maurer who approached him at the gas station. “She wanted to talk to me and I gave her a few moments of my time and she started spouting left wing talking points and I said goodbye,” he said.

While Beckman described Hale’s activities as “the strangest thing.” Amaty, the event security expert, said that helping to identify likely protesters did not present the same safety dilemmas as volunteering physical security assistance.

Selaty, of Citizens for Trump, said he knows a half-dozen members of the group who attend campaign rallies with an eye to thwarting protesters. “There are a few of us that travel around and go to every event and run interference a little bit,” he said. “We’ve all got to be vigilant.”

That vigilance extends into cyberspace, where other members of Selaty’s group have formed a team that combs social media for death threats, which they turn over to the campaign and the Secret Service. A spokesman for the Secret Service, Martin Mulholland, said he could not comment on whether the agency had received or acted on tips from the group.

He also declined to comment on the phenomenon of volunteer security at rallies. “Our statute authority limits our role to providing protection to the candidate,” Mulholland said. “We support our local and state partners, who provide for public safety.”

***

On March 12, the day after Trump’s aborted Chicago rally, a Twitter account named “Lion’s Guard,” with the handle @wearelionsguard, was created with the description, “We are an informal civilian organization dedicated to protecting the safety and security of innocent, peaceful Trump supporters from violent Far-Left agitators.” The account was dedicated to organizing unarmed volunteer security at rallies. Hours later, the account tweeted, “Someone just DM'd me a photo of my child's school front accompanied by a ‘I’m coming for him’ message. I’m closing this account until safe,” and shut down.



The next day, an account named “Lion Guard,” with the handle @lionsoftrump, began tweeting. It featured the same logo as the first account and a similar description. The account professed a slightly different mission, to find likely protesters on social media ahead of Trump rallies and publicize their photos so they could be identified and removed when they showed up.

The account, which last tweeted on March 29 with a dig at Soros, links to a website, LionsofTrump.net. The top of the site states, “Better to be a lion for a day, than a lamb for eternity.” The phrase is a quote from the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini that Trump retweeted in February after a Twitter account owned by the news and gossip site Gawker tweeted it at him.

Neither @wearelionsguard nor @lionsoftrump responded to interview requests made via Twitter. LionsofTrump.net is registered anonymously through Domains by Proxy, LLC, a service for masking the identity of a website’s owner.

Cox, meanwhile, plans to head from Pennsylvania to West Virginia, which votes on May 10, and then to California, which votes on June 7, and where he said he already has heard from thousands of interested bikers.

In July, Cox plans to be in Cleveland, where he expects to encounter Black Lives Matter and other anti-Trump protesters. He is coordinating with a variety of pro-Trump groups, including Citizens for Trump, Truckers for Trump, and Stop the Steal — an effort helmed by longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone —to organize a demonstration there during the Republican National Convention in July.

The pro-Trump demonstration is in the “pre-planning” stages, according to Selaty, and organizers are contending with the fact that most lodging in the Cleveland area has already been reserved.

Stone stirred controversy earlier this month when he said his group would publicize the hotels and room numbers of delegates to the convention who he suspected of trying to steal the nomination from Trump so that the businessman’s supporters could confront them. But he said that his comments were taken out of context, and that he is advocating only for peaceful demonstration and dialogue, arguing that scenes of chaos in Cleveland would run counter to his movement’s interests.

“It’s not good for anyone who supports Trump to give into provocations to violence,” Stone said, “because groups like MoveOn and Black Lives Matter would blame Trump.”

But, so long as Trump secures the nomination, his supporters will be in no mood to cause trouble. Selaty said he expects the gathering to be “more like a victory celebration because we do believe Mr. Trump will be nominated as the GOP candidate.”