DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — Conservative political activist and DCF Guns co-owner Joe Oltmann, who has long used violent political rhetoric, is now calling for the execution of President Joe Biden.
Oltmann made the comment Friday on his Conservative Daily political program, which streams online and on MyPillowGuy Mike Lindell’s far-right broadcast network, FrankSpeech .
Oltmann was reacting to President Joe Biden’s support for a ban on so-called assault weapons in his Thursday State of the Union address to Congress.
“I have gun stores and ranges,” Oltmann said. “I’m not taking one gun off the shelf.”
“That is the definition of treason, and he should be hung by the neck until he’s dead,” Oltmann said. “That’s the consequence. And you say, 'Oh my gosh, you're calling for his death.' I’m calling for him to be put on trial, held responsible for hurting Americans, for standing against the Constitution we have. And the consequence of that should be, and is up to, death.”
Oltmann is the founder of FEC United, a political group that has collected signed loyalty pledges from Republican elected officials and candidates in Colorado. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes FEC United as “an anti-government group with its own militia.”
For years, Oltmann has explicitly called for the deaths of his political opponents through treason trials and executions.
"I want to send the mainstream media to the gallows, radical leftists to the gallows, traitors to our nation to the gallows, and they all kind of fit in the same bucket," Oltmann said on his Conservative Daily Podcast in December 2021.
Oltmann once directly mentioned Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in a similar manner on Conservative Daily.
"You are a traitor," Oltmann said. "Gallows."
Oltmann has suggested building a line of gallows across the country to hang those he identifies as traitors, including U.S. Senators. He defends his rhetoric saying that each person killed would first be tried for treason, including Biden.
“For the FBI listening to this, I didn’t say that I was gonna do anything to him,” Oltmann said Friday. “I said he should be put on trial and he should face the maximum penalty. That’s what he should have.”
Oltmann went on to detail various methods by which he’d like to see Biden killed.
“Maybe not hung. Maybe it’s firing squad. Maybe it’s electric chair,” Oltmann said. “I’d be good with all three of those things.”
A spokeswoman for the Denver field office of the FBI said the agency “does not investigate based solely on protected First Amendment activity.”
“The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security,” said FBI spokeswoman Vikki Migoya in a written statement.
Dr. Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, says Oltmann’s rhetoric is particularly dangerous because of his prominent platform.
“Their words can reach someone who might be out unbalanced, volatile, angry, violent, who might then go out and try to commit an act of violence,” Pitcavage said. “There’s a history of this.”
"There's a term for this sort of violent rhetoric. It's called stochastic terrorism," Pitcavage said. "The idea behind that is if you just flood the airwaves, the internet, flood everything with this sort of incitement, somebody somewhere is going to decide that it's time to do something, and they're going to take some sort of violent action."
Pitcavage says Oltmann’s calls for executions for treason is a common framing used by extremists.
“You're rhetorically removing yourself from lynch mob violence and trying to suggest that there will be some sort of justice involved,” Pitcavage said. “But in the end, you're just talking about killing someone because you disagree with their views. You're still talking about murder.”
Oltmann, and DCF Guns by extension, has continued to hold sway in Colorado’s conservative political circles despite his extremism, sometimes acting as a connection between the fringe and more traditional wings of the Republican Party.
His political group, FEC United, was led by prominent Republican strategist Kristi Burton Brown in 2020 before Burton Brown became chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Burton Brown is now with the conservative group Advance Colorado.
In April 2022, Oltmann’s name was placed in nomination for governor at Colorado’s Republican Assembly by former GOP House Minority Leader Patrick Neville. Oltmann declined to run for governor.
Eventual GOP gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl appeared on Oltmann's show in November 2022 and offered her thanks for his "100% endorsement."
Also in 2022, DCF Guns’ Colorado Springs location hosted a “Shoot for the Win” fundraiser for a far-right candidate for El Paso County sheriff. The event featured Republican U.S. Senate primary candidate Ron Hanks, who had claimed without evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the work of Antifa. Hanks’ campaign ad for the Senate primary featured him shooting a photocopier labeled as a Dominion voting machine, a frequent target of Oltmann’s election rigging conspiracy theories.
DCF Guns’ Castle Rock location hosted a meet-and-greet for Douglas County Commissioner candidate Priscilla Rahn in January 2024, after Rahn left her role as vice-chair of the Colorado GOP to run for commissioner.
Oltmann hosted a December 2023 rally at DCF Guns’ Colorado Springs location in support of a Republican congressional candidate who had called for Colorado’s Supreme Court Justices to be arrested and tried for treason for removing Donald Trump from the ballot.
Oltmann is a central figure in election rigging conspiracy theories, specifically the unsupported claim that Oltmann himself listened in to an “Antifa conference call” where an employee of Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems said they had interfered in the 2020 election.
Oltmann, and other conservative media figures who repeated his claim about Dominion without evidence, face ongoing defamation lawsuits. Oltmann’s ideas reached the inner circle of former President Donald Trump’s campaign and legal teams, where they were repeated publicly.
Pitcavage, who has researched extremism in America for three decades, says many fringe figures could only dream of Oltmann’s connections to powerful Republicans in Colorado and on the national level.
“A lot of extremists don't have those sorts of connections,” Pitcavage said. “They only wish they had them.”
Pitcavage says Oltmann is able to “act as a conduit for mainstreaming extreme ideas and conspiracy theories.”
“And this is one way that extremism spreads,” Pitcavage said.
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