Three active duty members of the Marine Corps have been charged with participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, according to court filings.
Three active duty members of the Marine Corps assigned to intelligence-related jobs, including one at the National Security Agency headquarters in Maryland, have been charged with participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, according to court filings unsealed Thursday and military service records.
Cpl. Micah Coomer, Sgt. Joshua Abate and Sgt. Dodge Dale Hellonen were arrested Tuesday and Wednesday near Camp Pendleton, Calif., Fort Meade, Md., and Camp Lejeune, N.C., respectively, and appeared in local federal courts.
The FBI said Abate admitted to entering the Capitol “with two ‘buddies’” during a June 2022 interview that was part of his security clearance process while assigned to the Marine Corps’s Cryptologic Support Battalion, which is partnered and headquartered with the NSA at Fort Meade. According to charging papers, Abate said they “walked around and tried not to get hit with tear gas,” and “admitted he heard how the event was being portrayed negatively and decided that he should not tell anybody about going into the U.S. Capitol Building.”
Each faces counts including trespassing, disorderly conduct and illegal parading or picketing in a restricted Capitol building or grounds, in connection with the riots that injured scores of police officers, left offices ransacked and forced lawmakers to evacuate the premises amid Congress’s meeting to confirm the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The sergeants’ occupations as special communications signals analysts and the corporal’s job as an intelligence surveillance reconnaissance system engineer were first reported by Military.com and were confirmed in their service records.
