According to a federal agent’s affidavit, Ryan Taylor Nichols, of Longview, Texas, wielded a crowbar and large canister of pepper spray while surging into the Capitol on Jan. 6 alongside fellow Texan Alex Kirk Harkrider. Images and videos of the two men attempting to enter the Capitol building along with the mob were included in Justice Department documents.

In one video, Nichols uses a bullhorn to direct the crowd, yelling, “If you have a weapon, you need to get your weapon!”

In another video recorded from his hotel room in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot, Nichols, speaking in the third person, advocates using violence, according to the WUSA9 report.

“Ryan Nichols is done allowing his country to be stolen,” he says in the video. “And I understand that the first Revolutionary War, folks, it was violent. We had to be violent and take our country back. Well guess what? The second Revolutionary War, right now, the American Revolutionary War that’s going on right now, it started today on a Wednesday. It’s going to be violent.

“So, if you want to know where Ryan Nichols stands, Ryan Nichols stands for violence,” he continues. “So, yes, today, Ryan Nichols … Ryan Nichols grabbed his f—ing weapon and he stormed the Capitol and fought for freedom.”

Social media accounts belonging to Nichols and Harkrider were reported to the FBI by two separate witnesses within weeks of Jan. 6, according to the affidavit. Court documents noted that both Nichols and Harkrider documented their experiences that day on Facebook.

Nichols was arrested on Jan. 18 and was subsequently held in Smith County Jail in Tyler, Texas, before being moved to house arrest. He and Harkrider were originally charged with an array of criminal counts, including conspiracy and unlawful entry with a dangerous weapon, violent entry or disorderly conduct, civil disorder, assaulting a federal officer using a deadly or dangerous weapon, and aiding and abetting.

Those counts were narrowed to the aforementioned two following the prosecution’s superseding criminal court filing on Thursday.

Nichols was originally expected to begin a jury trial in November. Sentencing in Nichols’ case has yet to be determined.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Wasi said he couldn’t believe the news at first.

“I was in shock like, I say, oh my god, is it real?” Wasi said in an interview with Military Times. “Is it really my paper? My asylum is really granted or what?”

The decision comes nearly 11 months since Wasi said he turned himself in to border patrol agents to declare asylum but was charged with entering the U.S. without the proper documentation.

Wasi, 27, had left Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrew from the country after 20 years of conflict. As a special operations soldier in the Afghan National Security Forces, Wasi was under direct threat of retaliation by the Taliban. The last U.S. troops departed Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, after the Taliban captured Kabul, leaving as many as 150,000 Afghans like Wasi behind, including individuals who worked closely with U.S. military forces as interpreters and combat assistants.

The brothers refer to the vacuum of the American presence in their home country as “the collapse,” when the Taliban quickly took control over the government as the last planes departed from Kabul. In a harrowing journey across continents, Wasi made his way by air, taxi, and on foot to reunite with his older brother Sami, 30, in Houston. He was hopeful that the U.S. would welcome him with open arms, only to spend months in detention centers in Texas. He was released early this year after a swirl of press attention and major efforts by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas.

But his asylum hearing was shifted multiple times, from July, to a date in mid-December, then November. Wasi wasn’t expecting a decision today.

Now, he just wants to provide support for his family still in Afghanistan.

“I try to find some good job, for my family, and I hope I go to college,” Wasi said, after first tuning up his English. His brother, Sami, largely does the translating for him. The two have lived together since Wasi’s release from the detention center in Del Rio.

Allison P. Erickson’s piece about the Safis first appeared in The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

By playing the movie on a federal base, some critics have questioned whether SOUTHCOM’s leadership is following a policy that requires troops to remain apolitical at work – as QAnon followers have spread false rumors about and bashed President Joe Biden’s administration – and to maintain a separation of church and state, considering the film’s heavy Christian narrative.

“What is the idea and the ideology behind putting this on a military installation? Is this some form of indoctrination into an ideology of extremism?” asks human trafficking and exploitation consultant Sunnetta “Sunny” Slaughter, referring to the anti-government QAnon tropes being doled out by the film’s main actor Jim Caviezel, while promoting the film. According to the Associated Press, Caviezel has denied QAnon ties yet spoke at a QAnon-organized convention in 2021 and espoused several of the theory’s talking points on conservative talk shows hosted by Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk.

The free screenings were originally planned for Aug. 28 and Oct. 19. The emailed flyer from U.S. Army Garrison-Miami manager Joanne B. Fitzgerald, obtained by Military Times, invited all locally based personnel to attend. It said it was being shown “In support of SOUTHCOM’s mission to promote respect for human rights and combating trafficking in persons in Central and South America and the Caribbean.” The bottom of the invite also stated, “The showing of this film does not imply or constitute endorsement by the U.S. Army nor SOUTHCOM.”

After Military Times initially inquired about the film’s scheduled showings, SOUTHCOM nixed the event, explaining in an email to the base that the free screenings were canceled until further notice in order to “prevent the appearance of copyright infringement.” But the emailed missive, obtained by Military Times, added that “the film is currently available to view at local theaters, and personnel and their families who would like to see the film are encouraged to do so.

“The movie’s central theme and its connection to SOUTHCOM’s AOR and our Human Rights Office (HRO) Combatting Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) program are inescapable and will serve to raise awareness of the prevalence of trafficking in human persons and sexual abuse and exploitation within our area of responsibility,” it said.

And SOUTHCOM spokesman Jose Ruiz defended the initial planned screening, telling Military Times that the movie’s central theme of combatting human trafficking in Latin America intertwines with the command’s area of responsibility and its mission, which includes protecting human rights.

“The subject of the movie is something that’s of great concern to the command, in that it follows as part of its mission of countering transnational criminal organizations,” Ruiz said. “Because of the way these transnational criminal organizations exploit migrants — the hopes of migrants — in ways that end up being serious violations to their human rights, and unfortunately in some cases lead to the deaths of the migrants.”

“Sound of Freedom” is based on the work of Timothy Ballard, who claims he worked for the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security, before launching the controversial anti-child-sex-trafficking group, Operation Underground Railroad. The activist group stages and films “stings” to round up traffickers in developing countries, at the invitation of foreign law enforcement, according to the group’s site. But the organization has been publicly maligned for allegedly creating more media frenzy and attention for Ballard than solutions for the rescued victims.

In the film, actor Jim Caviezel’s character is a former CIA officer who quits his job after his bosses refuse to authorize rescuing a Honduran girl from a Colombian sex-trafficking cartel.

At a film screening in London, director Alejandro Monteverde denied that the movie had anything to do with QAnon ideology, a sweeping collection of unfounded and disproven theories that revolve around the concept that the U.S. government is run by a secret faction of pedophiles. QAnon adherents also embrace former President Donald Trump and the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.

Yet after the film’s release, Caviezel publicly touted QAnon-aligned conspiracy theories on conservative talk shows and events organized by QAnon groups, per videos posted by Media Matters’ Eric Hananoki. Widely known for his role as Jesus of Nazareth in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ,” Caviezel repeated the baseless QAnon claim that “liberal elites” are part of an elaborate scheme to kidnap children and harvest their blood for adrenochrome, a real chemical compound, to experience euphoria. (Scientists say that’s not what adrenochrome does, despite its mention in Hunter. S Thompson’s 1971 psychedelic classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” as a way to get high.)

“Although the directors say they don’t support it, the fact that they have their main person constantly referencing and leaning to a particular ideology is concerning for the film, and for the context and conversation around the film,” said human trafficking expert Slaughter, of Caviezel’s frequent references to QAnon ideology. She’s also wary of the film’s heavy emphasis on victims’ gaining salvation through Christianity as well as rescue. Slaughter identifies as Christian but fears the focus on a single faith might alienate trafficking victims who don’t share the same beliefs.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The order was met with criticism by some, and it remains a point of contention on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers are set to debate this fall a measure in the 2024 defense policy bill to defund the Pentagon’s anti-extremism efforts.

Did you take part in some way in the Pentagon’s extremism stand-down training? If so, we want to hear from you for a future article. Email mvj-tips@militarytimes.com to share your thoughts. Anonymity may be granted upon request.

What was your role in the stand-down? What was the experience like? Did you learn anything new? What do you think resulted from the stand-down? Get in touch with us to share your first-hand account.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism.

An Air Force spokesman said Robertson had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force on Feb. 2, 1970 during the Vietnam War, as a “metalworker helper” — a role that no longer exists. He served “four years or fewer,” Air Force spokesperson Michael T. Dickerson said, adding that he’d been assigned to Chanute Air Force Base, which closed in 1993.

In his civilian life, Robertson worked as a structural steel and welding inspector before retiring and turning to woodwork, according to his LinkedIn account.

The FBI tried to arrest Roberston at his home in Provo, Utah, after the former airman made threats to President Joe Biden in Robertson’s Truth Social and Facebook accounts, according to the AP. A shootout ensued and Robertson was killed at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday, in Provo, Utah, according to a statement from the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office to Military Times.

The confrontation came just hours before Biden landed in the state to mark the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, or PACT Act, which dramatically expand benefits for veterans facing toxic exposure injuries.

Robertson had threatened FBI agents in social media postings back in March, when they tried to approach his Provo home to question him about threats against other federal officials, according to the Justice Department filing: “To my friends in the Federal Bureau of Idiots: I know you’re reading this and you have no idea how close your agents came to ‘violent eradication.’”

Robertson’s accounts showed videos of the former airman wearing camouflage netting like a “ghillie” suit, and holding a M24 sniper weapons system rifle, according to the Truth Social account referenced in the court documents.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

What was really happening? Parade preparations for Flag Day and the U.S. Army’s birthday in historic Philadelphia. The military vehicles were on the move as part of the city’s annual Stars and Stripes Festival, held this year on June 14, when members of the Pennsylvania National Guard showed off military equipment to the public, according to Maj. Travis Mueller, a Pennsylvania National Guard public affairs officer.

Heading into the July Fourth holiday Tuesday, more troops and military equipment will be present in urban areas as part of citywide celebrations, including the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular, the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., and the Armed Forces River Parade in San Antonio. Military flyovers are being planned for events across Oregon, Colorado and Vermont, among other states.

These celebrations offer more opportunity for the spread of rumors like those that took hold in Philadelphia. One way to stand down the panic? If you see military troops in your city or town, check out local law enforcement and local military bases’ social media accounts, or states’ National Guard pages on Twitter and Facebook, where public affairs officers often post about service members and equipment appearing in public before planned activities.

The unsubstantiated rumors of martial law sparked by troops spotted on Philly streets is just one of many incidents of such images spawning disinformation online. Such conspiracies go back to the 1970s, when so-called “black helicopters” became a symbol of a military takeover of the U.S. But they’ve grown in frequency since 2020, when myths about voter fraud eroded the public’s confidence in U.S. democracy, experts said.

“The whole idea is quite preposterous. We’re so far from any situation in which martial law would be declared that it’s laughable,” said William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor who wrote a book about the domestic role of the U.S. military. “The fact that it’s become a part of disinformation campaigns is concerning.”

In addition to parades and other public events sparking concerns, the arrival of summer – annual training season for the National Guard and Reserve – means more troops on the move and more conjecture about a military takeover.

“What people are seeing now is what people have seen every summer for as long as I’ve been alive,” Banks said. “Folks are taking their summer National Guard duty right now and riding convoys to wherever they’re going to be. For many of us, it’s a regular scene in the summer on the highways.”

Rumors spread online this month when a military convoy was spotted on state roads near Idaho Falls. The Idaho National Guard had posted the planned movement on its Facebook page on June 13, alerting the public that its 148th Field Artillery Regiment would be moving tracked vehicles the next day from its training area back to its armory. “Don’t be alarmed!” the post warned. Still, a video of the convoy was posted by a worried onlooker and went viral on social media. One post that received more than one million views warned, “BREAKING NEWS! Tank group on the highway in Idaho falls today!”

A few days later, some social media accounts shared videos of low-flying helicopters in the Bay Area, describing their presence as an “undeclared military drill.” The MV-22 Ospreys and Sikorsky White Hawks seen over Marin County, California, on June 16, were security for President Joe Biden’s planned fundraising visit, the San Francisco Gate reported.

In February, false reports spread that combat had come to San Diego’s shores, when the U.S. Army Special Operations Command conducted training around the city. This despite the city’s high concentration of military bases and routine exercises, and an advisory issued in advance by Naval Base Coronado. Residents told local television stations they were caught off guard by low-flying helicopters and explosions.

Adding to the confusion? Several social media accounts – some of them verified on Twitter and boasting tens of thousands of followers – have falsely claimed that all of these movements are signs the military is preparing for an impending violent event and the invocation of martial law.

“Inconceivable” and “utterly absurd” is how legal expert and retired Army officer Geoffrey Corn describes the various martial law conspiracies. If ever anyone tried to illegally invoke martial law, it would be stopped by military leaders, Congress and the courts, said Corn, director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University.

“The leaders of the DOD would look at this and say, ‘We don’t have legal authority to do what you’re asking,’” Corn said, adding that “As soon as Congress got wind of it, it would create a political crisis,” and the federal courts would shut it down.

A rise in martial law conspiracies

The presence of military equipment has been a long-standing trigger for conspiracies. Stories of black helicopters and their role in covert operations started in the ‘70s but gained more attention in 1995, when former Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, held congressional hearings about black helicopters allegedly targeting ranches in the rural West.

False claims about alleged government preparations to declare martial law are becoming an uncomfortable American tradition. In 2015, U.S. Army Special Operations was preparing to hold what it called a routine multi-state training exercise called Operation Jade Helm, spurring rumors of a covert effort to impose martial law. Such was the widespread panic that the Texas governor deployed the Texas state guard to monitor special operations troops. In 2018, former CIA director Michael Hayden attributed the Jade Helm panic to Russian disinformation targeting Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.

While these types of conspiracies date back decades, rumors of the government invoking martial law have been on the rise since former national security adviser Michael Flynn publicly called for former President Donald Trump to impose martial law to force a new election after his 2020 loss, said Syracuse University law professor Banks. Flynn’s status in the conservative movement and experience as an Army lieutenant general lent weight to his espoused theories that ballot tampering had lost Trump the election – theories proven false by multiple state and federal investigations.

At the time, Flynn retweeted an ad from a conservative political organization that called on Trump to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and order the military to oversee a new election.

“Flynn called over and over and over again in 2020 for the invocation of martial law,” Banks said. “He’s a widely followed guy in certain circles and by virtue of his rank, he had a lot of credibility.”

The Covid-19 pandemic also gave rise to false claims about martial law being declared to invoke a nationwide quarantine – some of the rumors reaching so many people that the National Security Council spoke out to debunk them. “Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown,” the NSC tweeted.

The Pentagon also debunked other viral claims about impending martial law in 2020, including one Twitter post that showed a video of Army equipment being moved by rail with the comment, “Coming soon?” Then-Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Rath Hoffman said the video showed joint light tactical vehicles being transported by Army Material Command from a factory in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to then-Fort Bragg, now-Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Former Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, has been working to counter some of the conspiracies he sees online, while battling his own frustration that so many fellow Americans could be so gullible.

“I think there is a real importance in exposing the ludicrous-y of it,” he told Military Times.

Kinzinger put that in practice, responding sarcastically, he thought, to a tweet about the alleged impending military takeover of Philadelphia. “As a Guardsman let me just say, this is exactly what you think it is and not drill weekend or summer training. No, it’s a takeover of whatever you love by whoever you hate.” That sarcasm was lost on some, who took his post to be confirmation of their worst fears.

Kinzinger has battled what he sees as a flood of disinformation that has enveloped his party, including debunked claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. He was one of only two Republicans on the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and ultimately left Congress over his party’s embrace of such claims.

“You can fight to try to tell the truth, you can fight against the cancer in the Republican Party of lies of conspiracy of dishonesty,” Kinzinger told ABC “This Week” when he announced he was leaving Congress.

He wants to see the military be similarly pro-active to spot disinformation about military activities online, and act swiftly to correct the record.

“I think it’s important for people to see that when they hear something like the government is going to take over Philadelphia, that they actually are aware of what that conspiracy is before they just take someone’s word for it,” he said.

Retired Army colonel David Maxwell, a former U.S. Army Green Beret, cautioned against vilifying or attacking believers in unfounded conspiracy theories.

“We are naturally suspicious of the government,” said Maxwell of his fellow American citizens.

“This disinformation reinforces that idea that we have to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, but we don’t realize that the enemy that is attacking us is not our government, not our military, but the outside forces. That is the real paradox,” said Maxwell, now a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He suggested attacking the baseless claims themselves with a four-pronged strategy, represented by the somewhat unwieldy acronym R-U-E-A: recognizing adversarial strategies, understanding how those adversaries implement their plans, exposing those plans to the affected public and finally attacking the bad actor’s strategy to undermine its efforts.

On the positive side, the U.S. has “very engaged citizenry,” he said. But it’s “informed by bad ideas and influenced by Russia and China, Iran and North Korea,” as well as other bad actors.

A brief history of U.S. martial law

Since the United States was founded on July 4, 1776, martial law has been enacted at least 68 times. The figure varies because one state’s governor allegedly declared martial law 30 times, but official records don’t show all of these declarations. A few of these declarations made their mark on what the U.S. could see today.

General Andrew Jackson declared martial law for the first time in U.S. history in 1814 before the Battle of New Orleans to guard Louisiana territory from British attack. Local authorities and members of the press criticized the general’s controversial actions.

Until the mid-1800′s, martial law couldn’t be declared because it was incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, according to Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and policy institute. In a seminal case, Luther v. Borden, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1849 to rule in favor of an entity attempting to declare martial law to prevent a state government overthrow. Based on that case, all U.S. states theoretically have the legal ability to declare martial law when warranted, which helps explain why 57 of those 68 cases of martial law were declared by states.

Nunn said the federal level is a different story. The U.S. government has declared martial law 11 times since 1776, but that was more than two centuries ago, and the Supreme Court hasn’t clearly defined whether it currently has the legal authority to do so.

“Martial law is a historical phenomenon … largely confined to the period between the start of the Civil War and the end of World War II,” Nunn said.

On Dec. 7, 1941, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii’s governor declared martial law on the islands. U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt approved the move, and the islands remained under military rule for nearly three years. Civilians charged with crimes went before military tribunals and the military controlled more mundane aspects of life, like traffic, parking and trash pickup.

After Hawaii, the use of state- or territory- level martial law ticked up, particularly as civil unrest grew during the Civil Rights Movement, but the actual implementation of martial law looked less like all-out military rule and more like a state governor calling upon the national guard for riot control.

When groups peddle claims that a military exercise schemes to declare martial law, Nunn said they likely think of the military rule in Hawaii and not the more frequently exhibited use of controlling riots. The most recent declaration of martial law in U.S. history happened in Maryland about 60 years ago, when the government imposed martial law that lasted over a year in the town of Cambridge, during the racially-charged civil unrest known as the Cambridge Riot of 1963.

Unlikelihood of martial law in modern-day U.S.

What stands in the way of declaring martial law? All the federal and state bodies that are already in charge, enforcing their own laws with their own forces, like the police departments that now exist in all 50 states, Nunn said. “Their resources are so large and so heavily armed… you don’t necessarily need the military to come to a situation with federal force,” he added.

“Martial law is the absence of law,” legal scholar Banks said. “So, if martial law should ever be invoked, it should be in situations of a very extreme breakdown in civil authority, where the government isn’t operating and can’t operate normally, and where the courts are no longer open and operating.”

That would only conceivably happen in cases like a catastrophic nuclear attack or a plague that kills a majority of the population, said retired Army officer Corn.

In any other instance, Corn believes a declaration of martial law would prompt immediate legal challenges, and that troops would balk.

“I think military leadership would refuse to obey,” Corn said. “The military’s oath is to the Constitution, and we would expect that any military leaders – advised on what the limits of their legal authority are domestically – would step up and not follow such an order.”

That event and others like it have opened a flood of debate about veteran and military communities being targeted with disinformation and the rise of extremism among the ranks.

Consider how Jan. 6, 2021 is described: as the “Capitol riot” or “insurrection” by most Democrats and many independents and centrist Republicans, or a “peaceful protest” by GOP supporters of President Donald Trump, shows a deepening divide between the two main U.S. political parties – a gulf arguably widened and supercharged by political-party- and nation-state-sponsored disinformation, leaving disgruntled followers potentially vulnerable to extremist ideology.

As part of an 18-month project through a partnership between Military Times and Military Veterans in Journalism, we’ll be reporting about disinformation and extremism as the issues relate to veterans and military communities. To start, we’ve compiled a list of frequently asked questions about extremism and disinformation in the military we will update throughout the year.

If you have a tip or idea, please email us at MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

What is disinformation?

To start with, in the broadest definition, disinformation is any false information that is created deliberately to mislead people. It’s often spread covertly with the intention of influencing public opinion or obscuring the truth, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary

U.S. government leaders have taken a more nuanced approach. The Department of Homeland Security says disinformation can be targeted toward an individual, social group, organization or country. It’s typically spread with malice or greed and in pursuit of political, social or financial agendas, according to the Anti-Defamation League. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Department of Defense said the most harmful disinformation is that which sows global mistrust and confusion.

This kind of disinformation can come in various forms and includes hoaxes, propaganda and spear phishing, according to the United Nations.

Another tool for spreading disinformation, known as synthetic media, is becoming more prolific following recent advances in artificial intelligence. Synthetic media refers to AI-created text, images and audio. One of the most notorious forms of synthetic media are deepfakes, images or videos in which the face of one person is overlaid onto another person, often in real time.

What is misinformation?

Among the slightly varying descriptions of disinformation from dictionaries, government agencies, nonprofits and international organizations, one key word is consistent: “deliberate.” The deliberate nature of disinformation is what differentiates it from misinformation.

Misinformation, while also false, is not shared with the intention of causing harm, DHS says. Or as the American Psychological Association put it, misinformation is getting the facts wrong.

How about the lesser-known term, malinformation?

Unlike both disinformation and misinformation, malinformation is based on fact. It’s true information that is used for harmful or manipulative purposes, according to DHS.

In many cases, malinformation refers to situations in which facts are used out of context, such as editing a video to remove key information. It can also refer to information that stems from the truth but has been exaggerated to mislead, the Government of Canada said in a recent report. For example, some alternative media sites that rely on outrage to generate views will distort headlines, a tactic known as “click-bait.”

Doxxing – the practice of publicly revealing someone’s private information without consent – also falls under the umbrella of malinformation, the Anti-Defamation League said.

Who is deploying disinformation?

A variety of sources from homegrown extremists to foreign adversaries create disinformation targeted toward the American public.

Disinformation is spread by foreign states, including Russia, China and Iran, as well as transnational criminal groups and human smuggling organizations. Other governments have accused the U.S. of spreading disinformation in their countries, too. China said earlier this year that the U.S. spread rumors about data security issues with the Chinese company TikTok in an effort to suppress foreign businesses.

The State Department works to counter disinformation from Russia, which creates and spreads false narratives in order to confuse people and advance the Kremlin’s policy goals, the agency said. Russia and other actors spread disinformation to exploit the American public, and they often target the country during national emergencies, according to DHS.

Particularly after disasters, disinformation spreaders use social media to deny the event ever happened or claim it’s a “false flag,” meaning a covert operation by authorities that frames someone else. One of the most recent examples of this came after a train carrying hazardous items derailed in Ohio, when conspiracy theories spread that the wreck was a planned, deliberate attack by the U.S. government.

Disinformation can also come from U.S. citizens. Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former security chief, went so far as to say in 2020 that “the future of disinformation is going to be domestic.”

So-called domestic disinformation, which comes from message boards, websites and social media accounts, is created by both far-left and far-right individuals. However, two recent studies from the University of North Carolina and New York University found it’s more often a right-wing phenomenon. This homegrown disinformation bubbles up from message boards and finds its way onto ideological websites and social media. Its consequences are sometimes deadly. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, reported there were a historically high number of far-left and far-right terrorist attacks in 2021, and far-right attacks were more lethal.

Elected officials also have participated in the spread of disinformation. The University of Oxford found that politicians running for office in 45 democracies, including the U.S., have shared false information to gain voter support.

What is extremism?

When officials talk about extremism in the military, they generally focus on extremism in terms of religious, political or social ideologies.

The Pentagon lists one broad definition of extremism in the Department of Defense Instruction 1325.06. The directive makes clear that the actions matter most, specifically, violent action: “Advocating or engaging in unlawful force, unlawful violence, or other illegal means to deprive individuals of their rights under the United States Constitution or the laws of the United States…” And also advocating, engaging in, supporting or encouraging things like subversion, sedition or unlawful discrimination.

Each branch develops its own policies to enforce the DoD’s top-down guidance.

However, anti-extremism watch groups and academia break down extremism into non-violent extremism and domestic violent extremism.

DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation use the term domestic violent extremism to refer to domestic terrorism threats, or U.S.-based, non-foreign influenced actions “through unlawful acts of force or violence dangerous to human life.” There’s an emphasis here on the “action,” since harboring extreme or hateful opinions or ideology may be considered protected under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. You can have a hateful thought or opinion, you can voice that thought or opinion, but you can’t perform a hateful act without legal consequences.

One report by the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), an academic research center, collected data on instances of extremism since World War II and defines non-violent extremism as “individuals who engage in illegal extremist activity short of violence or who belong to a violent extremist group but do not participate in violent activities.” Again, the key here isn’t simply having an extreme belief, but acting violently from or on behalf of that belief.

How widespread is extremism and disinformation among military communities?

The extent to which extremism has seeped into military and veteran communities is a contentious debate on Capitol Hill and around the country. The argument about whether it’s a problem has heightened since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when some Trump supporters believed the election was stolen and sought to overturn his loss.

There’s a lack of data about the infiltration of extremism in the active-duty military, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan, nonprofit think tank. Experts generally agree that only a small number of service members have been involved in extremist activities, but some argue that even a tiny proportion could damage the military’s reputation and harm U.S. security.

There’s more data available about veterans’ adoption of extremist views, and research in this arena has increased in the past two years.

Here’s a snapshot of what the data says:

• Of the rioters in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, 17% were veterans, Harvard University found. The same study showed that nearly all participants in the siege that day had shared or received misinformation about the 2020 election on social media platforms.

• Veterans were responsible for 10% of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots between 2015 and 2021, according to the CSIS. Veterans make up about 5% of the overall adult population in the U.S., according to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in May.

• Individuals with military backgrounds make up 15% of the cases in a database kept by the University of Maryland that tracks people who were driven by their extremist views to commit criminal offenses. Together, veterans and service members account for 6% of the U.S. population as of May.

• The University of Maryland’s data shows a “significant uptick” in the past five years of people with military backgrounds who have committed extremist offenses. From 1990 to 2010, an average of seven people with military histories were added to the database every year. That increased to 63 people per year from 2018 to 2022.

A brief history of violent military extremists

Acts of violent extremism aren’t new to the U.S. military. The DOD tried addressing tensions following the Civil Rights Movement in a policy in 1969, but incidents continued.

Then in the early 1980′s former Army Green Beret and retiree Frazier Glenn Miller started a white nationalist paramilitary group called the White Patriot Party in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Miller’s recruits wore Battle Dress Uniforms with Confederate flag patches sewn onto the left shoulder. Miller had plans to start a race war and used active-duty soldiers to create a weapons cache. Federal agents infiltrated the group before a major catastrophic event.

On April 19th, 1995 a former Army sergeant and special forces selection washout named Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City killing 168 and injuring 684. That event is known as the deadliest domestic extremist act in the U.S. to date. Federal investigators later found McVeigh harbored antigovernment extremist ideology and even visited the Branch Davidian compound in Waco before the federal standoff there. The bombing in Oklahoma City prompted the Department of Defense’s next revision of its extremism policies.

Nidal Hasan’s name went down in infamy on November 5th, 2009. The then Army major opened fire on soldiers and civilians preparing to deploy at a readiness processing center on Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos) near Killeen, Texas. Hasan killed 13 and injured more than 30 others. Prosecutors later argued in his trial that he had planned his attack to align with his views on Islamic extremism. He acted alone, but under the umbrella of a hateful or extremist ideology.

In terms of disinformation, one example occurred in March 2015, when residents in small towns across Texas began hearing whispers among social media networks that an annual military exercise known as “Jade Helm” was actually an attempt to suppress the locals, seize guns, and enforce martial law. The uproar kicked up enough of a ruckus that the governor enacted the Texas State Guard to oversee the national military’s operations. Years later, a former Central Intelligence Agency director revealed that Russia had launched a disinformation attack against the U.S. government.

What is Congress’ role in helping solve these problems?

Republicans and Democrats disagree about whether it’s necessary to address extremism among military and veteran communities.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, Democrats urged the Pentagon to do more to counter extremism in the ranks, and they pushed the Department of Veterans Affairs to intervene when veterans show signs of being susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups.

Many Republicans, however, have attempted to halt Defense Department training aimed at countering extremism, criticizing it as a distraction from military preparedness and an effort to politicize the armed forces. Some Republicans have taken issue in particular with a daylong extremism “stand-down” in 2021, a military-wide training on the dangers of extremist ideology.

Lawmakers opposed to such training were able to cut seven of eight measures aimed at combatting domestic extremism from the annual defense policy bill, a legislative fight that is sure to come up in defense budget wrangling again this year.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The sentence was the longest in the more than 1,000 Capitol riot cases so far, sending a clear message that those who took part in storming the U.S. Capitol, aiming to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, will be held accountable for the deadly violence unleashed that day. The steep sentences clash with the narrative spun by some in the GOP aiming to portray the melee as peaceful protest.

Rhodes’ federal sentencing follows similar tough sentences for the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, but is likely to have even wider impact.

“For the past 12 plus years he has played an outsized role with the militia movement and other similar anti-government extremists,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

Prosecutors had asked District Judge Amit Mehta to sentence Rhodes for 25 years, based on his leadership role, as well as invoke a provision that allows courts to hand out harsher sentences for terrorism. But the Rhodes’ defense countered that he’d served in the military, the Associated Press reported, and was honorably separated from the Army after serving two years and seven months on active duty.

“Eighteen years is still a very substantial sentence,” Pitcavage said. “It’s the longest Capitol storming sentence to date.”

Out of the around 500 people sentenced for charges related to storming the Capitol, the next longest sentence belongs to Peter Schwarz, who will serve 14 years behind prison bars.

Immediately after Mehta handed down Rhodes’ sentence Thursday, he sentenced Kelly Meggs, the leader of the Oath Keepers’ Florida chapter, to 12 years – the third-longest sentence for a Capitol rioter. According to court documents, Meggs had discussed planning an alliance with another extremist group, the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, ahead of the Capitol riot.

Ringleader Rhodes

Rhodes, 58, started the Oath Keepers, an anti‐government, right‐wing fringe group, in 2009, at a time when militia groups made a resurgence after the election of Democratic President Barack Obama. The militia groups grew by the hundreds and Rhodes’ stuck out as a clear influencer targeting military members, veterans, firefighters and police in its recruitment efforts, Pitcavage said.

Rhodes’ was among the most high profile cases to come out of the Capitol riot, during which supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.

Rhodes’ lawyers argued the Oath Keepers made no explicit plan to storm the Capitol and stop President Joe Biden’s victory. However, prosecutors presented evidence of Rhodes sending encrypted messages to his membership following the 2020 election, telling them to refuse to accept the election result and saying, “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war… prepare your mind, body, spirit.”

During a call with members a few days later, Rhodes outlined a plan to stop the transfer of presidential power, which included preparations for the use of force, according to the indictment.

Of the 180 individuals with military backgrounds who were charged with participating in the Capitol riot, 21 were members of the Oath Keepers, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, known as START. A total of 30 Oath Keepers were present at the Capitol that day, the Department of Justice said.

Along with Rhodes and Meggs, four other members of the Oath Keepers were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the attack, including Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo. Members Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson, and Thomas Caldwell were convicted of other felony charges related to the attack, but they were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

The arrest of Rhodes and Meggs effectively shuttered the group, said Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at START, which tracks the criminal activity of extremist groups. The Oath Keepers operated through a hierarchy, which made it difficult for members to continue after the arrest of their leaders.

“Putting the leadership in jail has crippled that organization. It’s defunct at this point,” Jensen said. “The structure was organized under the central leadership or Rhodes. When he and his lieutenants were put away, the whole thing crumbled.”

The group recruited veterans by appealing to their oaths to defend the U.S. Constitution, the ADL said in a 2015 report. The Oath Keepers told veterans that conspirators were taking over the government and asked them to pledge to disobey unconstitutional orders, referring to a conspiracy theory about the government confiscating Americans’ guns. The group stoked paranoia and fanned anti-government sentiments to give its members purpose, the ADL said.

A 2022 leak of an Oath Keepers membership database revealed the names of hundreds of current and former military personnel, elected officials and police. In total, 117 troops serving in the military, 11 serving in the reserves and another 31 military contractors and affiliated civilians were identified.

Members of the group often acted as vigilantes. The Oath Keepers formed their own armed patrol during protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, following the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, and they patrolled the site of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some members showed up with firearms to polling locations in 2016 and 2022, allegedly to discourage voter fraud. They also offered security to business owners who defied COVID-19 safety measures.

Earlier this month, four members of the Proud Boys, three of whom with military backgrounds, were also convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Capitol riot. Thursday’s sentencing of Rhodes and Meggs could signal how much time prosecutors will seek in those cases. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, along with members Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, are scheduled to be sentenced in August and September.

Domestic Terrorism?

Thomas O’Connor, a member of The Soufan Group, said in the future, domestic terrorism may be the best way to charge people like Rhodes and Meggs, if only such a charge existed.

“After many of these incidents, they come out and say this is an act of domestic terrorism. But in all reality, there is no penalty for the actual charge of domestic terrorism.” O’Connor said federal prosecutors needed to find other criminal violations for the actions he said fall under the definition of domestic terrorism.

In other cases where the prosecution may not prove seditious conspiracy, O’Connor said a charge of domestic terrorism may accurately capture the intent of some crimes, like the Tree of Life shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or the Charleston black church shooting.

“In the Dylan Roof case, he was charged with very serious crimes of homicide and hate crimes federally,” O’Connor said. “But because they’re domestic terrorists, we can’t charge someone and actually identify them as a terrorist because there’s no ability to do so.”

Prosecutors argued that groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, far-right anti-government groups, rushed to the Capitol to prevent a federal process from taking place in a deliberate effort to prevent transitioning the presidential office and duties from former president Donald Trump to current president Joe Biden.

Mia Bloom, an expert on extremist radicalism, said the lengthy sentences indicate that the judicial system takes domestic terrorism seriously.

With nearly 1 in 5 of Capitol rioters charged as veterans or active-duty service members in the military, Bloom said the issue of military extremism remains a pertinent issue despite recent efforts to downplay its prevalence among the Department of Defense.

Bloom called a recent study issued by RAND misleading, adding fuel to the fire of conservative efforts to remove military extremism from DOD line of sight. The study found that military members were as likely to harbor extreme beliefs as the rest of the American public, although the study authors noted their survey required veterans to self-identify as extremist.

“We didn’t have a pro-Jihad group in Congress after 9-11 but we have a section of Congress that refuses to consider right-wing terrorism is terrorism,” Bloom said.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

Teixeira, 21, is charged with violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information he accessed with a top-secret security clearance and posting them to a Discord server, a social media platform popular in the gaming community.

The decision came after federal prosecutors argued in a court document that Teixeira hid “unsavory aspects of his character” from public view, citing violent and racist views from Teixeira’s online social media accounts.

Prosecutors said Teixeira revealed that he had hidden his extremist views from security clearance inspectors by scouring his online presence and downplaying a racist incident, which led to school detention as a “misunderstanding.” Prosecutors said Teixeira “certainly did not reveal—and potentially took action to actively conceal—the significant volume of racist, antisemitic, and violent rhetoric he posted online lest his true nature and character prevent him from achieving his objective.”

Teixeira’s defense attorneys had argued that others accused of violating the Espionage Act had been allowed to stay out of jail ahead of their trial, and listed multiple examples, like former Department of Defense analyst Lawrence Franklin. The FBI charged Franklin in 2005 with three counts of espionage-related crimes. Franklin did not need to serve pre-trial confinement but did receive a 12-year sentence, such was the severity of his crimes.

The prosecuting team presented comments from Teixeira’s social media accounts, obtained by the FBI, that showed Teixeira harbored extremist views. In one video described in the court document, Teixeira uses ethnic and racial slurs while holding a rifle at a weapons range.

One Discord user suggested Teixeira create a blog account to share top secret documents Teixeira allegedly bragged he had access to. He replied: “shooting myself in the back of the head twice isnt something im fond of …. none of this is public information … and making a blog would be the equivalent of what chelsea manning did.”

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, was convicted of espionage offenses in 2013 for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

At least two National Guard commanders have been suspended from their duties after findings that Teixeira had been warned on at least two occasions that he was handling sensitive information incorrectly, and the National Guard unit has been stripped of its intelligence mission while an internal investigation is ongoing.

Federal agents arrested Teixeira on April 13, 2023 after he allegedly posted dozens of highly classified U.S. military documents that included assessments of real-time events in Ukraine, and evidence of spying on U.S. allies.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism.

Conservatives have blasted Pentagon’s efforts so far, which started in earnest after the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, decrying the training on how to spot hateful ideology as an effort to politicize the military and tarnish the public image of the armed forces. But Democratic lawmakers — and senior military officials — say teaching troops to identify and eschew extremism is necessary to prevent the few troops with radical views from poisoning the wider force with their hateful ideology.

“White nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the chamber’s floor Thursday. He urged Senate Republicans to make a similar public pledge, in response to controversial comments by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., earlier this week.

Tuberville was asked if he thought white nationalists should be allowed to enlist and serve in the military.

“Well, they call them that,” Tuberville told NPR local station WBHM in Birmingham. “I call them Americans.”

Schumer said any support for such extremist views in the ranks is “utterly revolting,” but Tuberville’s office said the quotes have been taken out of context, insisting in a statement that the Republican senator “was being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military.”

Tuberville, and many GOP colleagues, have criticized the Defense Department’s 2021 extremism “stand-down,” a military-wide training on the potential signs and dangers of extremist ideology. Critics said the training – part of diversity, equity and inclusion education embraced by the Biden administration – wasted troops’ valuable time, while military leaders said it amounted to only a few hours of extra work for each individual.

As Schumer delivered his Senate speech on Thursday, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced legislation which “prohibits the use of appropriated funds to investigate extremism in the military” and would require an audit of all diversity programs currently active across the services.

The measure is sure to be a key point of contention in the committee’s upcoming debate over the annual defense authorization bill, expected to be drafted next month.

Supporters of the Defense Department training and the broader anti-extremism efforts point to recurring issues of violent ideology among individuals linked to the military.

For example, in the eight months following the mandated stand-down, defense officials reported 100 cases of servicemembers engaging in prohibited acts of extremism, according to committee documents.

And last month, National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, 21, was arrested for leaking online classified documents related to U.S. support to Ukraine and other foreign allies. The Associated Press reported that the airman frequently posted racist and violent comments in online chat rooms.

And only days ago, a Texas man who years ago was booted after only three months of Army basic training, gunned down eight people in an attack investigators believe may have been spurred by his racist and pro-Nazi views.

In the wake of the Texas attack, members of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism are meeting with lawmakers, urging them to adopt the group’s recommendations to address extremism in the military, co-founder Wendy Via told the Military Times.

The group proposed about a dozen measures it wants the Pentagon to implement, including bolstering its tattoo database to keep watch for hateful insignia, investigating the social media activity of prospective recruits, and creating an intervention program for service members after they’ve been forcibly removed from the military and are vulnerable targets for extremist groups. So far, the group has experienced pushback in Congress, Via said.

“There should be more opportunity for members of the military to have this kind of extremist training, just like they have sexual assault training,” Via said. “Just because they have sexual assault training doesn’t mean that every member of the military is prone to commit sexual violence.

“Nor is training about extremism meant to say that every member of the military is racist.” But Via said that’s what lawmakers are saying of the training, “in order to justify their refusal to address any kind of white supremacy.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.