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For more reporting about Josh Abate and extremism in the military, listen to the new series 'A Good Guy' from NPR's Embedded podcast.

“Have you ever tried to overthrow the U.S. government?”

If you’re trying to get top secret security clearance for a government job, that’s a standard question for the required polygraph exam. And the answer, obviously, should be no.

But Josh Abate couldn’t say no if he wanted to pass the test.

“It depends,” he said, when he took the exam in early 2022 for an internship.

The polygrapher paused and asked him to elaborate.

“Well, on January 6th, I went into the Capitol building.”

That was the first time Abate, a 24-year-old sergeant in the Marines, had talked openly about what he did that day.

At that point, he was doing well in the Marines. He made sergeant early, got a Navy commendation medal and was selected for this coveted internship with the National Security Agency.

“If you get the internship, you can basically ride that out until retirement if you wanted to,” he said. “It exponentially grows your career.”

Abate has always wanted to be a Marine. “There's nothing else I wanted to do. There was no plan B,” he said. “It was Marine Corps.”

Abate is tall and muscular, with short brown hair and a bit of a baby face. One of his forearms is covered in a large and colorful tattoo depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s from Revelations 6, he says.

He grew up in rural Virginia, about 30 miles west of Washington, D.C., and met his wife, Ashley, when they were both in high school taking part in Junior ROTC. Abate is the son of a former Marine who became a cop. He tells us his dad is a Republican and his mom, a nurse, is a Democrat. Abate recalls that they would often argue about politics.

But for Josh and Ashley, there was one politician for them: Donald Trump.

Ashley is blond and petite, and the day NPR interviewed her, she held their infant daughter as she spoke to us.

She called Trump a moral man and said they share the same values.

“You know, I come from a household where religion, manners, work ethic, that kind of thing, is very important,” she said.

And Josh? He said he likes the fact that Trump is supportive of a strong military.