With less than 24 hours until Inauguration Day, the Pentagon is on “high alert” on Sunday over the possibility of “insider attack” from service members assigned to security operations.
A warning issued by defense officials on Sunday prompted the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event. Following a thorough screening, 12 members of the National Guard were removed from the mission to protect the presidential inauguration, defense officials said Tuesday according to Politico.
as noted in the port, “two of the troops made ‘inappropriate comments or texts,’ prompting their removal from the Capitol, Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said in a news conference. Problems with those two people were raised by the troops’ colleagues and by an anonymous tip.”
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to give more details about whether those comments were political in nature, tied to extremism or directly related to a threat to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
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“The FBI found problems with an additional 10 troops during vetting, and all were removed from the mission “out of an abundance of caution,” Hokanson said.
Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said the vetting process would uncover any sort of issue in a service member’s history, including past criminal activity.
