Local Oregon GOP Invited Proud Boy Security Team to Guard a Secret Meeting

On May 1, ahead of a secret meeting to oust their chairman for being too inclusive, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon signed a contract to receive security forces from a local man named Daniel Tooze.

“We were greatly pleased to discover you, and your extensive experience with church events, weddings, and various patriotic events,” three of the party’s top leaders wrote Tooze in a letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. “Dan, as we have discussed our focus is on having a safe event with no problems.”

But Tooze was not your average security guard, as Willamette Week first reported. He was, as a quick Google search would have shown, a prominent associate of the Proud Boys, the far-right paramilitary group deeply implicated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has previously shared pictures of himself in the group’s uniform, with a caption identifying the group by name.

And as the Multnomah County Republican Party charted a more Trumpist path one night last week, members of Tooze’s security force patrolled the quiet residential area, where they argued with locals who were uncomfortable with their presence.

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Oregon is a frequent hotspot for Proud Boy antics—and now, at least twice this year, for collaboration between Proud Boys and their associates and local Republican parties. This latest incident took place last Thursday, May 6, when the Multnomah County GOP held a private meeting to expel its chairman, Stephen Lloyd. Lloyd did not return a request for comment, but Tim Sytsma, a committee member of the Multnomah GOP, told The Daily Beast that the party had followed its bylaws to the letter while ousting the now-ex chair.

Still, as Willamette Week reported earlier in the month, Lloyd’s expulsion signaled a rift in the party, particularly his recent call for diversity in the group. “The Chairman should promote the Party Platform, and not state [that] ‘Diversity is an extremely important part of society and diversity of ideas is what we should be striving for,’” an internal party petition read.

The petition also took issue with Lloyd’s support for public Multnomah County Republican Party meetings, due to what petitioners claimed was a threat of infiltration from anti-fascists.

“We dare not announce where and when we are meeting in the city of the original Antifa group, Rose City Antifa, which continues to actively hurt people and damage property nightly in Portland!” the petition read. (The original anti-fascist groups organized in opposition to German and Italian fascism in the 1920s.) “Stephen [Lloyd] must acknowledge the danger of Antifa attempting to interfere or infiltrate MCRP.”

Those preferences were on display last Thursday, when the party held the key meeting at a church without advertising it. A spokesperson for the church, which rents out space for a number of causes, including recently as a vaccination center, told The Daily Beast it hadn’t known the nature of the meeting when it agreed to host the event.

“What we were aware of the event on May 6 was just a policy meeting according to the paperwork,” the spokesperson said. “They didn’t mention anything about [a] Republican group. We’re so regretful that we allowed the group to use it.”

In a Sunday letter to the church, reviewed by The Daily Beast, the Multnomah GOP conceded that the church had been unaware of the meeting’s “content and activity.”

But most remarkable was local party leaders soliciting free services from Tooze, the letter shows. “We appreciate that you are a proficient, private volunteer security group with vast experience in event security,” they wrote. “We are thankful moreover that you are a volunteer security group, it is very important that we work as a teem to keep our event calm and peaceful.”

Sytsma told The Daily Beast that he’d been unaware of Tooze’s affiliations. “I don’t know the membership of the group we contracted with, but no money exchanged hands,” he said. “It was voluntary.”

In fact, Tooze is a known associate of the Proud Boys, and told The Daily Beast via text message that he did not object to that very characterization. On Facebook, he has repeatedly promoted the Proud Boys and advertised their events, often describing the group as a physical countermeasure against the left. In one representative post, he shared a picture of anti-fascists with the caption “the infection” and a group of Portland Proud Boys with the caption “the disinfectant.” Elsewhere, he characterized a Portland council member as “antifa” because she supported cuts to the police budget.