Troops at inauguration pre-screened for extremism

The roughly 25,000 National Guardsmen deployed to the U.S. capital to ensure President-elect Joe Biden is able to be sworn in peacefully went through an additional background check to weed out any whiff of domestic extremism.

Added for one of the most fraught deployments in the history of the Guard, the screening is “about the same” as the standard background check that Guardsmen go through when they initially enlist, the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard said in an interview on Saturday. It is intended as “another layer” of security on top of continuous monitoring of the force, he said.

“For this deployment everybody is screened additionally, but it’s more of a reassurance, because we do everything we can do know our Guardsmen, our soldiers and airmen,” Major General William Walker said.