Neither Hegseth nor Donald Trump’s presidential transition team have made any comment on the situation.
The US Army veteran appointed by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was flagged by a former colleague as a possible “insider threat” for having a tattoo associated with white supremacist groups.
Pete Hegseth, who downplayed the role of military personnel and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in the wake of Trump’s 2020 presidential defeat and criticized the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to confront extremism in the ranks, said he was removed by his unit from serving as Joe Biden’s guard during his inauguration as President in January 2021.
According to him, his dismissal, by the District of Columbia Army National Guard, was decided due to an “unfair identification as an extremist” based on a cross-shaped tattoo on his chest.
This week, however, a colleague from the National Guard, who was, at the time, the unit’s security manager and was part of an anti-terrorism team, stated, in statements to the Associated Press, that he had sent an email to those responsible from the unit reporting a different tattoo, with a design that has been used by white supremacists and noting that it is an indication of an “insider threat.”
According to DeRicko Gaither, the warning was given after he received an email with a screenshot of a social media post that included two photos showing several of Hegseth’s tattoos.
Gaither claimed to have researched the tattoos – including one of a Jerusalem cross accompanied by the words (“Deus Vult” “Deus Quer” in Latin) on his bicep – and determined that they were sufficiently associated with extremist groups to take the email to the their commanders.
Several of Hegseth’s tattoos are associated with an expression of religious faith, according to Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, but they have also been adopted by some far-right and violent extremist groups.
“Its meaning depends on the context,” he said, speaking to the Associated Press (AP).
Neither Hegseth nor Donald Trump’s presidential transition team have made any comment on the situation.
An investigation published in October by AP indicates that more than 480 Americans with military backgrounds were accused of ideologically motivated extremist crimes between 2017 and 2023, including more than 230 detained as part of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
The numbers, collected and analyzed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, constitute just a small fraction of those who served in the United States military, but, according to the AP investigation, conspiracies involving former military personnel are more likely to end up with large numbers of victims.
Hegseth, like many Trump supporters, has underestimated the seriousness of the riot at the Capitol – when on January 6, 2021 and incited by still President Trump, hundreds of supporters gathered to protest against the result of the 2020 presidential election, precisely on the date that both legislative houses were going to ratify the victory of his opponent, Joe Biden – like the role of people with military training.
The now Defense Department nominee, who has been a Fox television channel host since 2017, took a different approach to the widespread condemnation that was felt the day after the attack.
In a panel on Fox News, Hegseth portrayed the crowd as patriots who “love freedom” and country and who had “re-awakened to the reality of what the left has done” to the United States.
Of the 14 people convicted in the attack on the Capitol for seditious conspiracy, eight had served in the Armed Forces. Although the majority of people with military backgrounds detained in the wake of January 6 were no longer on active duty, more than 20 were still in the military at the time of the attack, according to START.
Hegseth wrote in his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published earlier this year, that only “a handful” of soldiers and reservists were at the Capitol that day and argued that the Pentagon overreacted in taking steps to confront extremism.
Hegseth’s profile prepared by the AP also states that he was in the army for almost 20 years and was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, having received two medals.
During that time, he has taken steps to support convicted war criminals and is said to have recently ordered his platoon to ignore directives limiting the ability to fire.
In a podcast interview released earlier this month, he said he was proud of his role in obtaining pardons given by Trump in 2019 to a former US army commando who will be tried for the murder of an alleged Afghan bomb maker, and to a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to shoot three Afghans, killing two.
At Hegseth’s request, Trump also ordered a promotion of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL convicted of posing with a dead Islamic State prisoner in Iraq.
