A Good Guy from NPR's Embedded

October 31, 2024·39 min·3 clips

A Marine sergeant admits to being inside the Capitol on January 6 during a polygraph for a sensitive NSA internship.

1. A Good Guy, a two-part series from NPR's Embedded (presented through No Compromise), investigates the case of Marine Sergeant Joshua Abate, who was at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the broader question of how the military is reckoning with political extremism in its ranks. 2. Reporters Tom Bowman, NPR's Pentagon correspondent, and Lauren Hodges co-host the series; both were present at the Capitol on January 6 and covered the events. 3. The episode opens in early 2022 with Josh Abate applying for a coveted NSA internship at the National Security Agency — a posting Abate describes as good enough to carry a Marine to retirement. 4. During the routine polygraph exam, when asked whether he has ever tried to overthrow the United States government, Abate answers 'it depends on how you look at it' and discloses he was inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — his first disclosure to anyone. 5. Josh, 24 at the time of the Capitol attack, is a third-generation Marine who says he wanted to be a Marine since middle school and had no plan B; he made sergeant early and received a Navy commendation medal. 6. Josh's friends from Marine Base Quantico, Sergeant Dodge Helenin and Corporal Micah Coomer, invited him via text to drive to Washington DC to watch Trump's speech on January 6. 7. Josh says pandemic restrictions at Quantico — he couldn't visit bars, restaurants, or travel to Norway for a planned trip — created frustration, and he describes his media diet at the time as 'basically Fox News and that was it.' 8. Both Josh and his wife Ashley were strong Trump supporters who believed claims of widespread electoral fraud, which Josh says led him to want to see Trump speak in person for the last time as president. 9. Josh says the three Marines arrived too late to hear Trump speak, drove toward the Capitol, and followed the crowd inside — claiming there were no signs saying not to enter and that two police officers near the door did not ask them to leave. 10. Lauren Hodges was already at the Capitol when the crowd arrived and describes a crowd of thousands, people pressing so tightly that she and NPR extremism correspondent Hana Alam had to grab each other and run sideways to avoid being crushed. 11. Josh says he walked around for about an hour, took pictures, and was not chanting or waving flags; he deleted all photos and videos when he returned to a Virginia burger joint with his wife and saw the TV coverage of the violence. 12. Josh told Helenin and Coomer they should not talk about it, and then never discussed January 6 with them again — until about two years later, when NCIS agents arrested him outside a Starbucks on base. 13. Micah Coomer's Instagram posts — photos of himself inside the Capitol — attracted FBI attention by August 2021, and a search warrant of his account revealed a private message sent three weeks after January 6 describing a desire for 'a boogaloo,' defined to a friend as 'Civil War II.' 14. The FBI's investigation into Coomer eventually connected back to Josh; NCIS agents showed him surveillance photographs of himself and his two friends inside the Capitol. 15. Research by Michael Jensen at the University of Maryland found that more than 200 people with military backgrounds were involved in the Capitol attack, about a third of them Marines — a disproportionate number given that the Marine Corps is the smallest fighting force. 16. Jensen also found the Marines have one of the highest rates of extremist activity going back three decades and are conducting fewer internal investigations than any other branch despite having an outsized impact on the numbers. 17. Josh reached a plea deal with prosecutors: a guilty plea on one misdemeanor in exchange for a recommendation of 21 days jail and dismissal of the remaining three charges. 18. Federal Judge Anna Reyes initially told Josh during sentencing that she was inclined to give him six months in jail and called it 'scary' that active-duty military participated in the insurrection, but after reading more than 50 letters of support — including one from a Gold Star mother and one from a self-described 'strong liberal' — changed her sentence to 279 hours of community service. 19. Surveillance footage released by House Republicans showed Josh chanting 'stop the steal,' holding a Gadsden flag before tear gas entered the hallway, and climbing the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. to place a MAGA hat on it — contradicting his claims in four hours of interviews; he declined further interviews after being shown the footage. 20. The episode ends with a tease for episode two: a Marine Corps administrative separation hearing to decide whether Josh should remain in the Marine Corps.

As heard by us

January 6 is revisited through tape, timing, and the military's uneasy mirror.

Embedded's A Good Guy tracks January 6 through one active-duty Marine sergeant's path into the Capitol mob, then widens to the military's own struggle with political extremism inside its ranks.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want January 6 told through on-the-ground reporting and a military reckoning, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from No Compromise