Former federal air marshal Russell Jack says Donald Trump's MAGA movement has infiltrated federal law enforcement agencies, with many officers embracing right-wing dogma and openly endorsing such entities as QAnon and Punisher."

The MAGA culture has co-opted and taken over the federal government as far as law enforcement (is concerned)," says Jack on the Lean to the Left podcast. "And some of the things I've seen on that is like symbolism, like the QAnon or Punisher. QAnon is like an extreme version of MAGA, and the Punisher symbol is interesting."

"It's a Punisher skull," Jack explains. "It's based off the comic book. A lot of people in the military, like special forces would wear that. When law enforcement started wearing it, I questioned my fellow law enforcement officers. I'm like, why are you wearing a Punisher skull? And they're like, it's MAGA. And I'm like you do realize that is saying that it's okay to act outside the law. As a law enforcement officer."

Jack is the author of a new. book, "Is MAGA a Terrorist Movement," and he says that from 2016 to 2022 he saw MAGA operating freely inside the U.S. government, both as agents and management.

Jack worked for more than two decades as a federal air marshal, and before that as a federal police officer for five years with two different agencies. He began his career in the Army National Guard as a military policeman deployed for Operation Desert Storm.Has MAGA Infiltrated Federal Law Enforcement?"

When I was working as an air marshal, they (fellow officers) went from being quiet to saying the quiet part out loud. It went from quietly thinking these things to being empowered and emboldened to talk about them more," he says, and that was due to the election of Trump in 2016.

"So what I noticed is there started to become incidents like intimidation of LGBTQ community. And also just following a lot of the things were happening with, for lack of a better word, the takeover of the government. So it's very concerning that many people in law enforcement, especially my agency, were openly okay with MAGA, which...does a lot of illegal activity, which as a police officer, you would think, hey, a guy who has over 90 criminal indictments against him allegedly could be a criminal. And why would law enforcement support something like that? Anyone else if it was, a Democrat with 90 plus charges, I'm pretty sure they'd say something negative."

Why does Jack describe MAGA as a terrorist movement?

"Terrorism is basically, and I'm going to paraphrase it is using coercion, intimidation, violence force to illegally, using those methods, to achieve political goals, especially if it's done against a civilian population," he says.

"So, when you look at the parameters of terrorism it becomes pretty clear that a lot of the activities that have happened--January 6th, where they violated the 12th Amendment. Ratification of our votes. And by them stopping that, because the vote was stopped, they violated the 12th Amendment. January 6th was violent. They injured over 100 police officers. They killed police officers. And then there's many other examples also, to Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband being attacked with a hammer, the man fractured his skull, the surrounding of the Biden bus. Here's an example of civilian intimidation. So they surrounded that to intimidate them and that's terrorism."

The "Let's Go Brandon" comment," he says is "a euphemism for F Joe Biden. So that is also intimidation. The purpose to that is to cow liberals or non MAGA people into silence."And then you have the death threats...to election officials. They've happened to Democratic members of Congress. They've happened to people who are involved in prosecution of Donald Trump. So those are all examples of how they are a terrorist movement."

Has MAGA infiltrated federal law enforcement?

There is no doubt, warns Jack, who says this is a danger to our society andcalls on all Americans who care about our country and its freedoms to vote. "The best way to counteract them is voting," says Jack. "I want you to know how important that vote is and what it represents."