When a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 in an attempt to overturn the presidential election, many of the rioters had family by their side.

Among those charged in the riot are a mother and son who recorded themselves in the Senate chamber; husband and wife QAnon believers who took a photo holding hands in the Capitol; a father and son on a birthday road trip; and numerous other siblings, relatives and spouses who stormed the Capitol together.

These families are part of what researchers call the organized clusters involved in the riot friends and families who were not necessarily part of extremist organizations but who still coordinated their actions in close-knit groups. These clusters make up about one-third of the people facing federal charges related to the insurrection, according to a report released on Tuesday from George Washington Universitys Project on Extremism.

Rather than an homogenous mob moving with the same intent and fervor on Jan. 6, preliminary arrests and assessments of the rioters have shown that the crowd was made up of many different subsets. While far-right extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers face some of the most serious charges and are alleged to have planned for potential violence, many smaller groups that include families with far-right beliefs appear to have spurred each other on to join in the insurrection.

The initial data demonstrates the importance of involvement in friendship or kinship networks as a key factor in encouraging increasingly extreme beliefs and high-risk, often violent, activism, GWUs report states.