WASHINGTON—Robert Patrick Lewis is a Green Beret turned co-founder of 1st Amendment Praetorian, a group that provides security to grassroots, patriotic, and religious events, protecting these Americans’ First Amendment rights. This brought Lewis to Washington on Dec. 12, where he was part of the personal security detail for Lt. General Michael Flynn, who spoke about the fate of the presidential election in front of crowds gathered at the Supreme Court and the National Mall.
“The Praetorian Guard was the group of elite Roman soldiers who were specifically protecting the emperor. For us, we’re First Amendment Praetorian because we believe the First Amendment is the thing that makes us American,” Lewis said. It’s what separates Americans from all other nations of the world, he said.Thousands gathered to join marches and rallies in Washington on Dec. 12, petitioning the government for fair elections and transparent counting. Similar grassroots protests took place every Saturday since the general election in capitals across the 50 states. For the Washington event, Lewis’s group had been coordinating with local law enforcement agencies and scraping the web and social media to identify potential threats at the event.
“It’s integral that people can come out here and make their voices heard, that they can let it be known that they are not gonna sit down, that they are not going to be quiet anymore, that they want to talk about political support, how they feel religiously, just to say that they are not gonna sit down and allow our election to be stolen, and we want to protect them and give them the right to do that,” he said.The division in the country has made this an event to watch.
