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. A spokesman for D.C. Guard declined to say how many Guardsmen were rejected for the deployment during the screening process, citing operational security. “No, I can say no — but the National Guard is made up of the community, like any police department or federal agency,” Walker said. In June, the D.C. Guard faced fierce criticism for its use of force during the Black Lives Matter protests surrounding the police killing George Floyd. Unlike in other states, the D.C. Guard is under the ultimate authority of the president, through the Department of Defense and specifically the Secretary of the Army.
