Records reveal new Patriot Front details

COEUR d’ALENE — Newly released public records show that the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front had a presence in North Idaho more than a year before the mass arrest that made international news.

Earlier this month, Coeur d’Alene police arrested 31 men associated with Patriot Front who were allegedly en route to cause a violent disruption at a Pride celebration.

Property of the People, a transparency nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., released on Tuesday more than 1,200 pages of public records pertaining to Patriot Front from a request filed with the city of Coeur d’Alene.

The records detail reports of vandalism last summer, when stickers directing people to Patriot Front’s website were found on the North Idaho College campus and throughout Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden.

“This is at least the fourth one that we have had,” then Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Widmyer wrote in an August 2021 email. “We need to catch these people. Disgusting.”

The same month, Post Falls police told the FBI that the city, as well as Coeur d’Alene, had been “papered with a large number of Patriot Front posters.”

The documents did not indicate that local police had prior knowledge of Patriot Front’s alleged plans to riot in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Emails confirm that Coeur d’Alene police worked with the FBI and other area law enforcement agencies to develop a plan for June 11, when armed protestors threatened to clash with those celebrating Pride.

View the records at www.propertyofthepeople.org.