In the fall of 1978, Jackie Spear flew down to the jungles of Guiana in South America

to help her boss, then congressman Leo Ryan, investigate reports of abuse by a cult leader

named Jim Jones, who had a strange and creepy hold over more than 900 of his devoted followers.

The trip ended in a blaze of gunfire.

Ryan was murdered and Spear herself was shot five times, surviving only because she pretended to be dead.

More than 42 years later, Spear, now a congresswoman who represents Ryan's old California district,

had flashbacks to that horrific event as she ducked for cover in the house chamber

and heard the sound of gunfire as an angry mob of Donald Trump supporters assaulted the capital

demanding that the results of the November election be overturned.

Now Spear is trying to do something about it.

Haunted by the number of capital attackers who were veterans of the US military,

she is pushing a proposal to have the Pentagon much more aggressively police its ranks,

to evict those who have connections to extremist and white supremacist groups.

We'll talk to Spear about the parallels between the cult followers of Jim Jones

and those of now former President Trump, as well as just how serious the problem of extremists

embedded in the US military really is.

And we'll also talk to Michael Bromwich, the former Inspector General of the Justice Department,

about the news that the current Justice Department IG, Michael Horowitz,

has opened up an investigation into the stunning news that a previously unknown department lawyer

was conspiring with Trump to push out the leadership of the department

and install him as the new AG so he could back the president's plots to challenge the election.

But all that on this episode of Skull Duggery.

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