From combat to conspiracy
On June 7, 2007, Joshua James earned a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq.
On Jan. 6, 2021, he joined the siege of the U.S. Capitol.
THE CRACKLE OF HANDHELD RADIOS broke the morning stillness. Sound carries in the country, and on the rural outskirts of Arab, Ala., curious neighbors stepped onto their porches, craning their necks to see what was going on. Some thought the police had found an escaped inmate who had been a leading story on the local news. But even from afar, there was no mistaking the outsize yellow letters on the uniformed figures entering the single-story house at the end of the two-lane road: FBI.
The word spread quickly. Claudia Schultz was walking out of her jewelry shop on the town’s small main street when another store owner told her Joshua James had been arrested. Schultz was incredulous. “Josh? You mean our Josh?” In Arab, a town of 8,380 in northeastern Alabama, much of the community knew James, 34, as a soft-spoken, God-fearing family man with three young kids who ran his own pressure-washing business. Those who knew him better considered him a local hero—an Army combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who got choked up when he talked to local teenagers about enlisting in the U.S. military.
But the federal agents who showed up on James’ doorstep on March 9 described a very different man: an extremist who had not just broken the law but also carried out an assault on the same government he had sworn to defend as a soldier.
For weeks, James had helped plan an operation to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, investigators say, by coordinating and recruiting others to travel to Washington with paramilitary gear, including guns, tactical vests, helmets and radio equipment. A federal conspiracy indictment contends James and at least 15 other members of the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment militia, had organized, equipped and trained ahead of the siege that left five dead and dozens more injured. James was among the throngs of supporters of defeated President Donald Trump who rammed their way into the seat of American democracy. “Get out of my Capitol,” James allegedly shouted at riot officers. “This is my f-cking building!”
For many, reconciling the war hero and family man with the Jan. 6 insurrectionist is not easy. Federal prosecutors have described the Capitol rioters as a fringe group of violent extremists, conspiracy theorists and madmen.
