Proud Boys in the government

Hatchet Speed was a self-described member of the Proud Boys working deep inside the U.S. intelligence community. He joined other Proud Boys members to storm the Capitol on January 6, but he got away undetected and continued to work in sensitive jobs in the months after the insurrection, even as he amassed a huge arsenal of weapons and began to think about kidnapping Jewish leaders and others he considered an existential threat. He wasn’t arrested until 18 months after the insurrection, and no investigation has been conducted to determine whether he compromised classified information, a Navy spokesperson said.Officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on any possible damage to U.S. intelligence resulting from Speed’s decadeslong access to classified information.

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A Navy reservist for more than 20 years, with a bachelor’s degree in applied physics with an emphasis in computer science from Brigham Young University, Speed served as a cryptologic technician and intelligence analyst in the Navy reserves. He deployed to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan in 2011, and held other sensitive cyber and intelligence posts in connection with Naval Special Warfare units, which include the Navy SEALs.

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Finally, more than a year after the Capitol riot, the FBI launched an investigation of Speed. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was also involved, which suggests that records of Speed’s massive weapons purchases and his efforts to acquire unregistered silencers in the immediate aftermath of January 6 may have prompted the inquiry. [...] That March, the Navy, aware of the FBI investigation, removed Speed’s access to sensitive Navy facilities and gave him what amounted to a fake job with Naval Warfare Space Field Activity at the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that develops America’s spy satellites. Speed, who previously held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance, was not given access to NRO’s buildings nor its systems, a spokesperson for the NRO said. In addition to the FBI probe, Speed was also under investigation for two personnel-related cases within the Navy.

  The Intercept

Speed was arrested in June 2022.

Speed, 41, has been convicted in two separate trials on charges stemming from his extremism. In January, a federal jury in Virginia found him guilty on weapons charges for illegally purchasing three silencers as part of a $50,000 weapons-buying spree in the months after January 6. And last week, in a bench trial in federal court in Washington, Judge Trevor McFadden found Speed guilty of charges stemming from his activities on January 6. He will be sentenced later this spring.

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Speed’s participation in the January 6 assault on the Capitol, and his ability to avoid detection for so long despite a series of red flags, are part of a disturbing pattern. Three active-duty Marines were given new intelligence assignments even after they were involved in the January 6 mob, The Intercept reported in February, including one who was reassigned to work inside the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. The three Marines were finally arrested two years after they stormed the Capitol.

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In a public statement, the Navy said that it “does not and will not tolerate supremacist or extremist conduct.”

For more than a couple years.

Speed expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, even after Putin invaded Ukraine. He told the [undercover] FBI agent that he “would love to see [Putin] just really be the leader that the world needs right now,” but that might not happen because “he has a lot of Jews around him who advise him,” according to court records.

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Speed spoke forthrightly about his belief that violence would be required to retake America from the control of Jews and liberals. He told the FBI agent that he wanted to kidnap Jewish leaders, including billionaire philanthropist George Soros and leaders of the Anti-Defamation League, who he blamed for creating the Black Lives Matter movement. During one conversation, Speed said, “Jews for some reason love gang raping people. It doesn’t matter what they are doing, they always have time to gang rape … white girls.” He described Hitler as “one of the best people that’s ever been on this earth.”

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The leaders of the Anti-Defamation League drew Speed’s ire because “they spend all their time pushing for laws like this anti-lynching law that Biden just signed,” he said. The ADL was pushing anti-lynching legislation because “they know things are going to get bad enough that people like us are going to band together and straight up start lynching people.”

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Speed met eight times with the [...] agent, who secretly recorded their conversations. Beginning at a Starbucks near his home in Vienna, Virginia, in February 2022, Speed expressed such virulently antisemitic, racist, and genocidal views that it is difficult to understand how he could have remained in the intelligence community for so long without drawing more scrutiny.

Because it's not unusual there?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.