FILE – Violent rioters loyal to President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
A study on extremism in the military that was commissioned by the Department of Defense in wake of the Jan. 6 attack has been called out by the Associated Press for using old data that “grossly undercounted” the number of active and veteran members arrested for their involvement in the 2021 Capitol assault.
The Pentagon-funded study has been propped up as proof of extremism not being a problem in the armed forces by media outlets and political talking heads since its release in Dec. 2023, including Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who is referenced by the AP in its Nov. 26 report on the alleged DOD inaccuracies.
“Study Disproves Military Extremism Problem,” a headline said from Fox News and Hegseth on Jan. 4, 2024, per the AP. “They knew this was a sham,” Hegseth reportedly told a live Fox audience, in reference to assertions made by military leaders like Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, saying the Jan. 6 attack was a “wake-up call” to the extent of right-wing extremism in the U.S. military.
“Then they do the study, which confirms what we all know,” Hegseth reportedly said.
The Wall Street Journal cited the DOD study — titled, “Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense” — in an opinion piece with a headline that said, “The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists.”” Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee pointed to it on social media, saying it was evidence of a “witch hunt.”
Biden wrongly targeted our servicemembers w/ a divisive & political witch hunt on ‘extremism’.
This report found that polarization & division in the ranks may pose a greater risk than radicalization.
Biden’s divisive far-left politics don’t belong at DoDhttps://t.co/UPbXaHwLX6
— Armed Services GOP (@HASCRepublicans) January 3, 2024
The AP, however, found through an investigation of the Institute for Defense Analyses and its researchers who worked on the DOD study that their information was “old” and inaccurate.
According to the AP, report authors for IDA did not use new data that was readily available to them and instead based their “foundational conclusions” on Jan. 6 arrest figures that were allegedly more than two years out of date by the time the findings were released last December. “As a result, the report grossly undercounted the number of military and veterans arrested for the Jan. 6 attack and provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem,” the AP reports.
According to the IDA study, “of the more than 700 federal cases in which charges were publicly available a year after these events [Jan. 6], fewer than ten were for individuals who were serving in the military” at the time of the Capitol attack.
“Based on the size of the military relative to the general population and considering the rate of charges for males and females, we find no evidence that service members were charged at a different rate than the members of the general population,” the study says. “Nearly a year after the incident, there were 704 federal cases where charges are publicly available.”
According to IDA, 82 of the 704 people arrested had military backgrounds, or 11.6% of the total arrests. The institute used data compiled between June 2021 and June 2022.
The AP reports that the number of arrestees had nearly tripled when the IDA study was released last December, with 209 people with military backgrounds being listed as arrestees that month — and more than 230, or around 18%, currently.
The IDA study admitted that there had been “some indication” that the numbers were “slightly higher” and “growing” due to vets being charged at later dates, but it insisted that there was “no evidence” the same could be said about active duty troops. The institute claimed there was “no evidence” of participation in violent extremist events by DOD civilians and defense contractor employees, but that too was wrong, according to the AP.
Records obtained by the outlet show allegations being hurled at multiple contractors and at least one civilian employee. One alleged report was made in January 2021, nearly three years before the IDA study was published. It claimed a contractor at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center had called into meetings while they were at the Jan. 6 attack. The complaint reportedly led to the contractor’s termination.
“It’s a shame that a shoddy report by the Pentagon gives an opening to views like Hegseth’s and will perpetuate a head-in-the-sand approach to a serious national security issue,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the AP. “Making light of the problem is ultimately a threat to the security of the American people, and politicizing the problem, which Republicans have done over recent years, means more violence.”
