Oath Keepers leader’s son breaks silence on his traumatic childhood living in fear of government spies and looming apocalypse and how he survived – as he sells his rifles, body armor and tactical gear to launch Montana election bid

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes may recite some new oaths in his Maryland prison cell after learning his eldest son is running for office as a Democrat.

Dakota Adams sells his share of the family’s guns, body armor and tactical gear to fund his candidacy for the Montana House of Representatives.

And the 27-year-old is leaving behind other aspects of the “toxic childhood” that culminated in his estranged father’s prison sentence for his role in the Jan. 6 storming of Congress.

Dressed in leather and sporting black eyeliner, the volunteer firefighter said he has finally stepped out of his domineering father’s shadow and is “dealing with people like my real self.”

“I spent so long as a child conforming to a small character to enhance my father’s political ambitions and image that I refused to ever do it again for any reason,” he said.

Adams and his five siblings experienced a childhood of “extreme isolation” as they moved from house to house to escape creditors, the law and the threat of an impending apocalypse.

“Basically, until I’m an adult, it’s one continuous gray period of surviving and moving boxes,” he said.

“We lived in extreme isolation in a certain cultural bubble in increasingly paranoid and militant right-wing political spheres everywhere we moved in the country, until we finally ended up in Montana.”

Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 and became one of the far right’s best-known figureheads through a series of high-profile confrontations with federal and local officials.

But at home, his children learned little from their “homeschooling” other than the history of the American Revolution, leaving Adams functionally uncountable until he taught himself the times tables at age 19.

Two years ago, Adams and company two eldest sisters spoke of the extreme paranoia in their family and how they had to be careful what they said to their only acquaintances – their father’s militant friends.

“That was our only social circle ever,” Adams said, “and we had to be on guard because any loose talk or breach of operational security could harm our family.

“So we couldn’t talk about our lives, or let any unnecessary information slip, even to people within the movement.

“It didn’t affect our lives; it has disfigured our lives. Our lives took place in the breathing space that existed around the Oath Keepers.

“I was completely dependent on Stewart’s approval of me, and whether I was good enough, and my responsibility to get my family through the apocalypse.

“Then I turned 180 degrees to conspire against him.”

The misery finally came to an end when their mother Tasha rounded up her children and fled one morning in 2018.

“We told him we were going to the corner store, and he asked us to get steak,” Adams said.

“He didn’t think it was weird that I picked up my mom’s dog, or that we put all our stuff in the car and slipped past him.

“We would leave early in the morning before he woke up. But he woke up at four in the morning and was in a mania all day.

“So we passed our things in an overnight bag past him as he paced up and down the one-room cabin.”

He may have lost his family, but Rhodes’ star continued to rise in far-right circles as civil unrest under Trump’s presidency culminated in the events of January 6.

Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and tampering with evidence after helping to organize the attack and sentenced to 18 years.

Four days after the attack, he was recorded telling a meeting that his “only regret” was that they had not brought guns.

“We should have brought guns, we could have fixed it on the spot,” he said.

“I would hang Pelosi from the lamppost.”

Adams says it was the attack on the Capitol that convinced him to run for office.

“It served as a sobering wake-up call in terms of how much danger we really are in and how the Republican Party allowed a president to become an active danger to this republic,” he added.

‘I was forced to reevaluate many beliefs and was asked difficult questions about what I really stood for.’

He faces an uphill battle in deep-red Lincoln County, where Democrats peaked at 36 percent in 2016.

But he believes he has personal insight into what makes his opponents tick, even if he may come across as an “honest fool.”

“I don’t presume to attack anyone for what he or she believes,” he said.

“Because of the way I grew up, I understand a lot of the lexicon.”

“I feel like for a lot of people, being an honest weirdo is much better than being a Spirit Halloween cowboy if you’re asking for their vote.”

Today, he works in construction while juggling college classes and therapy sessions to address the “long-term effects of living in a toxic or dysfunctional household.”

“It feels very surreal sometimes because 95 percent of the time I have a normal life,” he said.

“And then my personal life is relevant to a national news story five percent of the time.

‘The disconnection feels incredibly strange.

“I don’t think I’ll ever fully catch up to where I would have been in life if I had had a semi-normal childhood.”

But he insists he has left his father’s extremism behind and will pursue change through consent.

“I have decided that I am going to redouble my commitment to the electoral process,” he added.

‘Whatever happens, I’ll try again. I think this will be a lifelong thing.”