JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The election is weeks away, and both candidates are still talking about the last one - more specifically, about January 6, 2021, when a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol while Congress certified Joe Biden as the next president. But the language Kamala Harrison and Donald Trump used to describe that day is worlds apart.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: He sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers.
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DONALD TRUMP: That was a day of love.
SUMMERS: Among those who broke into the Capitol, 1 in 5 had military backgrounds, both veterans and active duty. One of them was Sergeant Josh Abate, who followed the crowd along with two of his fellow Marines. NPR's Tom Bowman and Lauren Hodges have chronicled his story in a new podcast with our colleagues at Embedded, and they're here in the studio with me now. Hi to both of you.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
LAUREN HODGES, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So I just want to start with the title. It's "A Good Guy." Why that title?
HODGES: Because that was essentially his story he wanted to tell us about his participation in this day. He wanted to portray himself as a bystander, and he wasn't part of the rowdiness, aggression, violence and even said he didn't see any of that. But when we started digging into his story, that's not where the evidence was taking us. This is a really big part of the podcast, actually, which is getting into the nitty-gritty of what he actually did that day and what it means for the changing face of extremism, especially as we head into this election with Trump on the ticket again.
BOWMAN: But, Juana, to give you a taste of this story, let's hear a little bit about how Josh ended up in the Capitol that day. He was stuck at Marine Base Quantico during the pandemic, kind of frustrated, always glued to Fox News and these other conservative media outlets. And he was also totally buying into the false narrative the election was stolen. So two of his Marine buddies invited him to Trump's Stop The Steal rally, which we both covered.
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TRUMP: You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
BOWMAN: Really started whipping up the crowd.
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TRUMP: We're leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes.
BOWMAN: Remember; Trump had no proof of any of this. He said, I'm going to go up to the Capitol.
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TRUMP: Let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all.
BOWMAN: I couldn't hear him all that well. So I turned to my producer, and I said, did he say he's going to the Capitol?
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TRUMP: Thank you very much.
BOWMAN: Trump ended his speech a little after 1 p.m. I followed the crowd to the Capitol. And the closer we got, the mood, it just felt darker - like a thunderstorm was coming in. That's exactly when Lauren called me. She was already up there.
HODGES: Yeah. I was at the Capitol with our former extremism correspondent Hannah Allam.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Whose streets?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Our streets.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Whose streets?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Our streets.
HODGES: The big crowd that Trump sent over was starting to arrive - thousands of people.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Storm the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Storm the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Storm the Capitol.
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HODGES: The stream of people started to tighten around us.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: This is our Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Hang onto my backpack. (Expletive).
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HANNAH ALLAM, BYLINE: They pushed past the barriers. They're now going up the steps to the Capitol.
HODGES: And there were just more and more people coming.
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ALLAM: It's absolute pandemonium.
HODGES: We asked someone in the crowd, what are you going to do if you get into the building?
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: The people in this House who stole this election from us, hanging from a gallow out here in this lawn for the whole world to see so it never happens again - four by four by four, hanging from a rope out here for treason.
HODGES: We watched them rush past the police and start pushing against the doors, trying to break the glass. And then we saw the doors crack open, and people started to flood through them.
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ALLAM: They're in.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Stop the steal.
BOWMAN: The FBI says the Senate doors were the first to be breached at around 2:12 in the afternoon in what was it?
HODGES: Seven minutes.
BOWMAN: Seven minutes later, Josh went in through those same doors.
JOSH ABATE: We straight up just walked in the building. There was no signs. We didn't see any, like, barricades up to prevent us from walking in the building.
HODGES: You didn't see the break-in.
ABATE: No.
BOWMAN: And he told us he didn't hear any yelling or screaming or breaking glass or anything.
ABATE: Nobody was trying to, like, be rambunctious.
HODGES: Josh said he just stood back and took pictures. But most importantly, he says he wasn't involved in any of the scuffles with Capitol police.
ABATE: I'm pretty sure I could see the tear gas, but I, you know - I was far away.
HODGES: It's hard to imagine Josh simply walking into the Capitol building without noticing that the rally around him had turned into a full-blown riot. After about an hour of walking around, Josh says he and his friends finally saw some cops.
ABATE: The police started coming in to force people out, and we were like, OK, well, obviously they want us out, so we left.
BOWMAN: At this time in the Capitol, the cops are desperately trying to prevent these protesters from getting into the inner sanctum. One of them, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer as she lunged through a shattered window near the House floor. Babbitt was an Air Force veteran.
HODGES: And the lawmakers inside, they're scrambling for their safety. These lawmakers, by the way, are supposed to be counting votes to certify the election. But instead, they're running for their lives. According to Josh, around the same time, he and his friends are calmly walking out of the Capitol and back to their car.
BOWMAN: After an hourlong drive, Josh and his buddies find themselves in a Virginia burger joint.
HODGES: Josh's wife Ashley joins them for dinner at this place called Fatty's.
ABATE: They had a really good crabcake burger.
HODGES: And by this time, the Capitol attack is top news everywhere.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: We are witnessing history and what can only be described as a national disgrace, as we...
BOWMAN: And they look up on the TV screens, and they see the violence.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Washington, D.C., is under a mandatory curfew, and police and the National Guard are trying to restore order.
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HODGES: Ashley says she turned to her husband mid-burger and was like, did you see any of the stuff they're talking about?
BOWMAN: And at that point, Josh says he and Coomer and Hellonen all realized the same thing.
ABATE: Kind of like looking at each other like, we should probably not talk about this.
HODGES: He says this is when he took out his phone and started deleting all of the pictures and videos. He wanted no sign of him being there that day.
ABATE: I wanted to disassociate completely from January 6.
BOWMAN: Josh says he never spoke about January 6 with Hellonen and Coomer again.
HODGES: But keeping it quiet would be a lot harder than they thought. One of them just couldn't help himself.
ABATE: And that's when they found the boogaloo.
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SUMMERS: OK. And Josh's description there of what January 6 was like for him, it obviously didn't line up with what the two of you experienced. Tell me why that is.
HODGES: Yeah. That's a big aspect of this podcast - basically trying to figure out, is he telling the truth about what he did that day and his participation, or is this just a way to evade consequences?
BOWMAN: And, Juana, I got to say, in decades covering the military, I never encountered a story like Josh's. And it also raises questions about extremism in the ranks - something we also get into in this podcast.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Tom Bowman and Lauren Hodges. Their new podcast with Embedded is called "A Good Guy." Episode one is out today. Thanks to both of you, and I look forward to listening.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
HODGES: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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