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... The Pentagon-funded report to which Hegseth referred said there was no evidence the number of violent extremists in the military was "disproportionate to extremists in the general population."

"They knew this was a sham," Hegseth said, referring to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other military leaders. "Then they do the study, which confirms what we all know."

Hegseth, who was working for Fox News at the time and had no involvement in the report, wasn't alone. The Wall Street Journal's opinion page highlighted the same report as evidence that extremists in military communities were "phantoms" created by a "false media narrative." The X account for Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee posted that the study showed the focus on extremism in the military was a "witch hunt."

But The Associated Press has found that the study, "Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense" conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses, relied on old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence that pointed to the opposite conclusion.

In fact, the AP found that the IDA report's authors did not use newer data that was offered to it, and instead based one of its foundational conclusions on Jan. 6 arrest figures that were more than two years out of date by the time of the report's public release.

As a result, the report grossly undercounted the number of military and veterans arrested for the Jan. 6 attack and provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem, the AP has found. ...