Trump team “eaten up with … QAnon and conspiracy theories,” says analyst
Former Virginia GOP congressman Denver Riggleman showed “60 Minutes” Sunday night a graphic representing emails, phone records and texts, traffic between six January 6th “centers of gravity.” Representing 20 millions lines of data, the “monster” graph depicts traffic between “Trump team, Trump family, rally goers, unaffiliated DOJ-charged defendants, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and others, which are state legislators, alternate electors, things like that.”
Riggleman worked for the January 6 House Select committee in applying his background in military intelligence to derive from communications what he describes as a “roadmap to an attempted coup.” Riggleman, once a Freedom Caucus member, is no longer a Republican. He plans to publish what he found in, “The Breach,” a book written without the committee’s approval and before it releases its own conclusions.
“We don’t have text content. What we do have is how long they talked, when they talked. That is very important. And really does suggest that there was much more coordination than the American public can even imagine when it came to January 6th,” Riggleman said.
At one point during the assault on the Capitol, the White House switchboard called a rioter’s phone. Riggleman does not know who was on the White House end.
The texts between Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump allies sounded to Riggleman “almost like me looking at foreign terrorist groups in my past … the way they talked about their religion,” Riggleman said. “I’m finding that everything that they believe, the system that they have sort of built up in their mind, based on the support of Donald Trump, is false.”
“The Meadows text messages show you an administration that was completely eaten up with a digital virus called QAnon and conspiracy theories: an apocalyptic, Messianic buffoonery. You can look at the text messages as that roadmap, but it’s also a look into the psyche of the Republican Party today,” Riggleman said.
“The work of the committee is not built on the bedrock of Denver’s efforts,” someone a familiar with Riggleman’s efforts told the Washington Post:
A statement from the committee underscored Riggleman’s “limited knowledge” of the investigation and threw cold water on Riggleman’s suggestion that the committee was not pursuing evidence aggressively enough.
“He departed from the staff in April prior to our hearings and much of our most important investigative work,” wrote committee spokesman Tim Mulvey. “Since his departure, the Committee has run down all the leads and digested and analyzed all the information that arose from his work. We will be presenting additional evidence to the public in our next hearing this coming Wednesday, and a thorough report will be published by the end of the year.”
Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said on Sunday that the committee was “aware” of the call but could not say anything specific about it. “We are aware of lots of contacts between people in the White House and different people that were involved obviously in the coup attempt and the insurrection,” Raskin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And that’s really what all of our hearings have been about. You know, we’ve had more than 20 hours explaining that this was an organized, coordinated attempt to subvert the electoral process.”
Riggleman’s revelations may be less than his upcoming book will suggest. His data analysts examined the attempted coup through a digital keyhole while the committee assembled a more complete story of the day through interrogation of witnesses, examination of documents, and collection of public domain information.
The Select Committee plans its next public hearing for Wednesday, September 28th at 1:00 pm.
Now it’s a monster and will not obey — “Monster” Steppenwolf
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