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Hegseth, who has played down the role of service members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack and opposed subsequent Pentagon efforts to address extremism in the ranks, said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit to guard Joe Biden’s inauguration in January in 2021
He said he was unfairly identified as an extremist because of a cross tattoo on his chest.
This week, however, a fellow Guardsman who was the unit’s security manager and on the counterterrorism team at the time shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to unit leadership flagging another tattoo used by white racists, worried it was an indication of “threat from within”.
If Hegseth takes office, it would mean someone who has said it’s a lie that extremism is a problem in the military would oversee a sprawling department whose leadership reacted with alarm when men in tactical gear stormed the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a military-style stack. formation.
He also expressed support for members of the military accused of war crimes and criticized the military justice system.
Hegseth and Trump’s transition team did not respond to emails seeking comment.
As the AP reported in an investigation published last month, more than 480 people with military experience were charged with ideologically-driven extremist crimes from 2017 to 2023, including more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 uprising, according to data compiled and analyzed by the National the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.
While those numbers reflect a small fraction of those who have served honorably in the military — and Lloyd Austin, the current defense secretary, has said extremism is not widespread in the U.S. military — an AP investigation found that plots involving people with military experience were more likely to involve mass casualties.
“People who love our country”
Since January 6, Hegseth, like many Trump supporters, has minimized both the severity of the riots and the role of people with military training.
Amid widespread condemnation the day after the attack, Hegseth took a different approach.
At the Fox News panel, Hegseth cast the crowd as patriots, saying they were “freedom lovers” and “people who love our country” who were “reawakened to the reality of what the left has done” to their country.
Of the 14 people convicted in the Capitol attack of seditious conspiracy, the most serious charge stemming from Jan. 6, eight had previously served in the military.
While most of those with military experience arrested after Jan. 6 were no longer serving, more than 20 were in the military at the time of the attack, according to START.
Hegseth wrote in his book “The War Against Warriors,” published earlier this year, that only “a few” or “a handful” of active-duty soldiers and reservists were at the Capitol that day.
He did not address the hundreds of arrested and charged military veterans.
Hegseth argued that the Pentagon had overreacted in taking steps to address the problem of extremism, and he had taken the lead in the military’s efforts to remove from the ranks people he viewed as white racists and violent extremists.
Hegseth wrote that the issue was “false” and “fabricated” and characterized it as “spreading lies about racism in the military.”
He said that the efforts to eradicate extremism have pushed “ordinary patriots out of their formations”.
“America is less safe, and our generals simply don’t care about the oath they swore,” he wrote in “War on Warriors.”
“The generals are too busy assessing how domestic ‘extremists’ wearing Carhartt jackets will usurp our ‘democracy’ with gate barriers or flags.”
In a Fox News segment last year about Jacob Chansley, a Navy veteran known as the “QAnon Shaman” who walked around the Capitol wearing a fur hat with horns, Hegseth played a misleading video clip of then-colleague Tucker Carlson that tried to portray Chansley as a passive bystander.
In fact, Chansley was among the first rioters to enter the building and pleaded guilty to a felony count of obstructing official proceedings in 2021.
Chansley admitted to using a megaphone to rile up the mob, giving thanks in prayer while on the Senate floor for the chance to get rid of traitors and writing a threatening message to Vice President Mike Pence saying, “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming!”
In a Facebook message Hegseth posted with the video clip, he called the way the justice system treated Chansley “disgusting.”
“Trump, Chansley and many others … the left wants us all locked up,” Hegseth wrote.
Support for convicted war criminals
Hegseth served for nearly 20 years and was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. He has two bronze stars.
Speaking about his service and advocating for other service members and veterans, he has taken action to support convicted war criminals and recently said he told his platoon they could ignore directives limiting when they could fire.
In a podcast interview published earlier this month, Hegseth described being briefed in Baghdad in 2005 by a military lawyer on the rules of engagement.
Hegseth said the lawyer told them they couldn’t shoot someone carrying a rocket-propelled grenade unless it was pointed at them.
“I remember walking out of that briefing, gathering my platoon and saying, ‘Guys, we’re not doing this. You know, if you see the enemy and they, you know, attack before they can point their weapon at you and shoot, we’ll have your back,’ Hegseth said.
“All they do is take one incident and shout ‘war criminal,'” he said, referring to The New York Times, the left and Democrats, adding, “Why wouldn’t we support these guys even if they weren’t perfect?”
He said he was proud of his role in securing a pardon from Trump in 2019 for a former US Army commando to stand trial for the killing of a suspected Afghan bomb maker, as well as a former Army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to shoot three Afghans, killing two of them.
At Hegseth’s urging, Trump also ordered a promotion for Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.
He said that not long after that, he decided to end his military service in disgust.
But a fellow Guardsman who worked as a security officer before the inauguration provided the AP with an email he sent that shows he expressed concern about the second tattoo.
Retired Master Sergeant DeRicko Gaither, who in January 2021 served as the D.C. Army National Guard’s physical security manager and on the Anti-Terrorism Protection Team, told the AP he received an email from a former D.C. Guard member that included a screenshot of the post. on social media that includes two photos showing several of Hegseth’s tattoos.
Gaither told the AP that he investigated the tattoos — including one of a Jerusalem cross and the context of the word “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God Wills,” on his bicep — and determined they had enough connections to extremist groups to elevate the emails to their commanders.
Several of Hegseth’s tattoos are associated with an expression of religious faith, according to Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, but they have also been adopted by some far-right groups and violent extremists.
Their meaning depends on the context, she said.
Some extremists invoke their association with the Christian Crusades to express anti-Muslim sentiment.
January 6: The day that shook American democracy
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism notes that in 2023, those words were in the notebooks of shooter Mauricio Garcia of Allen, Texas.
Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011, had similar markings in his manifesto.
In an email sent by Gaither on Jan. 14, 2021, and provided to the AP, he expressed concern about Hegseth, a major at the time, and mentioned only the “Deus Vult” tattoo.
In an email to then-Major General William Walker, who was the commander of the D.C. National Guard, Gauther expressed concern that the term was associated with white racists who invoked the idea of a white Christian medieval past, as well as the Christian Crusades.
“MG Walker, sir, with the information provided this falls into the line of an insider threat and that is what we as members of the US Army, District of Columbia National Guard and the Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection Team are trying to prevent,” Gaither wrote.
“I said, ‘you’ve got to look at this,'” Gaither said in a telephone interview with the AP on Thursday.
“I got an email later that he was told to stay away.”
Biden’s inauguration took place just two weeks after the uprising, and the military was taking no chances.
More than 25,000 Guardsmen poured into the city, each undergoing additional screening depending on how close they would be to Biden.
A total of 12 National Guard members have been told to stay home, former Pentagon Secretary Jonathan Hoffman told reporters at a briefing the day before the inauguration.
At least two have been flagged for potential extremism concerns; the rest were due to other background check issues that the military, FBI or Secret Service found to be of concern.
It was not clear if Hegseth was among the 12 Hoffmans mentioned at the time.
Hegseth has also speculated in podcast interviews that he was asked to step down because of his political views, his role as a reporter covering January 6, or because he works for Fox News.
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