Mob showed signs of military form

Soldier-type training evident in rioter tactics

WASHINGTON — 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.

The formation, known as “ranger file,” is standard operating procedure for a combat team that is “stacking up” to breach a building and is instantly recognizable to any U.S. soldier or Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a chilling sign that many at the vanguard of the mob that stormed the seat of American democracy either had military training or were trained by those who did.

An Associated Press review of public records, social media posts and videos shows that at least 22 current or former members of the U.S. 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.

In many cases, those who stormed the Capitol appeared to employ tactics, body armor and technology such as two-way radio headsets that were similar to those of the very police they were confronting.

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. 6 insurrection that left five people dead

saw some of their worst fears realized.

Among the most prominent to emerge is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran from Texas who was arrested after he was photographed wearing a helmet and body armor on the floor of the Senate, holding a pair of zip-tie handcuffs.

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. A retired Navy SEAL, among the most elite special warfare operators in the military, posted a Facebook video about traveling from his Ohio home to the rally and seemingly approving of the invasion of “our building, our house.”

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.

Army commanders at Fort Bragg in North Carolina are investigating the possible involvement of Capt. Emily Rainey, a 30-year-old psychological operations officer and Afghanistan war veteran who said she had traveled with 100 others to Washington to “stand against election fraud.” She insisted that she had acted within Army regulations and that no one in her group entered the Capitol or broke the law.

“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey said.

Robyn Stevens Brody A line of men wearing helmets and olive-drab body armor walk up the marble stairs outside the U.S. Capitol in an orderly single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the man ahead. The formation, known as “ranger file,” is standard operating procedure for a combat team “stacking up” to breach a building.