Capitol rioters included highly trained ex-military and cops - Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump’s supporters massed outside the Capitol last week and sang the national anthem, a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.

military or law enforcement have been identified as being at or near the Capitol riot, with more than a dozen others under investigation but not yet named.

Experts in homegrown extremism have warned for years about efforts by far-right militants and white-supremacist groups to radicalize and recruit people with military and law enforcement training, and they say the Jan.

military officer,” said Michael German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Another Air Force veteran from San Diego was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to leap through a barricade near the House chamber.

Two police officers from a small Virginia town, both of them former infantrymen, were arrested by the FBI after posting a selfie of themselves inside the Capitol, one flashing his middle finger at the camera.

While the Pentagon declined to provide an estimate for how many other active-duty military personnel are under investigation, the military’s top leaders were concerned enough ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration that they issued a highly unusual warning to all service members this week that the right to free speech gives no one the right to commit violence.

Capitol Police was forced to resign following the breach and several officers have been suspended pending the outcome of investigations into their conduct, including one who posed for a selfie with a rioter and another who was seen wearing one of the Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps.

Dozens carried canisters of bear spray, baseball bats, hockey sticks and pro-Trump flags attached to stout poles later used to bash police officers.

The Oath Keepers, which claims to count thousands of current and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, have become fixtures at protests and counter-protests across the country, often heavily armed with semi-automatic carbines and tactical shotguns.

Emily Rainey, the 30-year-old psychological operations officer and Afghanistan war veteran who told the AP she traveled with 100 others to Washington to “stand against election fraud.” She insisted she acted within Army regulations and that no one in her group entered the Capitol or broke the law.

Meanwhile, police departments in such major cities as New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Philadelphia announced they were investigating whether members of their agencies participated in the Capitol riot.

A Texas sheriff announced last week that he had reported one of his lieutenants to the FBI after she posted photos of herself on social media with a crowd outside the Capitol.

“I can’t tell you the anger I feel at the thought of a police officer, and other police officers, thinking they get to storm the Capitol.”