Denver Riggleman: Why I Wrote It

Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. It is the morning after we are continuing to sort out what we learned yesterday from the January sixth committee. Of course, the big headline news was the subpoena of Donald Trump testimony, which I’m I’m sorry to have the spoiler alert here, testimony which is unlikely to actually happen. But that doesn’t mean that what happened yesterday was not consequential.

So in case you missed it, just a little bit of the flavor of yesterday’s January six select committee hearing.

Mister chairman, the violence and lawlessness of January sixth was unjustifiable.

But

our nation cannot only pub punish the foot soldiers who stormed our capital. Those who planned to overturn our election and brought us to the point of violence must also be accountable. With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former president, we chip away at the foundation of our republic. Indefensible conduct is defended, inexcusable conduct is excused. Without accountability, it all becomes normal

and it will recur. There has to be some way we can maintain the sense that people have that there’s some security or some confidence that government can function and that we can elect the president of the United States. Did we go back in the session? We did go back into session, but now, apparently, everybody on the floor is putting on two gas masks to prepare for a bridge. When trying to get more information.

So putting on their tear gas masks.

I can’t. We need an area for these house members. They’re all walking over the house with the towels.

They’re just breaking windows. They’re doing all all kinds. It’s really but somebody they said somebody was shocked. It’s just it’s just prelendous and all agreed instigations of the president of the United States.

Knowing that he had lost and that he had only weeks left in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business. One key example is this. President Trump issued an order for large scale US troop withdrawals. He disregarded concerns about the consequences for fragile governments on the front lines of the fight against ISIS

and

Al Qaeda terrorists. Knowing he was leaving office, he acted immediately and signed this order on November eleventh, which would have required the immediate withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan all to be complete before the Biden inauguration on January twentieth.

According to the source of the tip, the Proud Boys planned to march armed into DC. They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed source reported and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped. The source went on to say, their plan

is to literally kill people. Please Please take this tip seriously and investigate further. The

source also made clear that the proud boys had detailed their plans on multiple websites

like

the Donald Winn.

Just a few days before the election, Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief white house strategist, an outside adviser to president Trump, spoke to a group of his

associates. From China and said this. And what Trump’s gonna do is declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory.

In what and that doesn’t mean he’s the one. He’s he’s gonna say he’s the one. The democrats more of our people vote early than count. They’re voted, man. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s gonna take advantage of that.

That’s Australia. He’s gonna claim something one. So we wake up Wednesday morning It’s gonna be a firestorm.

We

are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion. And every American is entitled to those answers so we can act now to protect our republic. So this afternoon, I am offering this resolution that the committee direct the chairman to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from Donald John Trump in connection with the January sixth attack, on the United

States capital.

Those in favor will say, I

I I.

Those opposed is no. In the opinion of the chair, the eyes have it. So to sort all of this out on this weekend, podcast, we are lucky to be joined by Denver Riggleman, former congressman from Virginia’s senior technical adviser to the January sixth Committee. He was an Air Force Intelligence Officer, a contractor for the National Security Agency, and the author of the new controversial new book. The Breach, which covers some of the key parts of the committee’s investigation Denver.

Welcome back on the podcast. Hey, Charlie. Great to be here. So I wrote this morning, look, of course, Donald Trump lied. Of course, he tried to overturn a free and fair election.

I mean, of course, he fomended a violent insurrection. And of course, he sabotaged the peaceful transfer of power. We know all of this. He’s told us he did this. He celebrated it.

The committee reminded us the evidence is overwhelming and damning. So the only question now is whether America actually cares. So I I just wanna get your take. You’ve watched this. You have been immersed in all of the data.

Has the committee made the case the US versus Donald j Trump?

Oh, of course. I mean, you know, I’ve I’ve been saying this when you look at you know, the lack of fitness for office, belief, and unhedged conspiracy theories. I would say his violation of every principle of leadership ethics and integrity and morality, what he put out on social media, sort of his culpability and radicalization, how he directed really his lieutenants when he talk about in the legal, political, and judicial spheres to overturn an election looking at executive orders that were, you know, sort of misplaced and misused, the fact that there certainly were White House phone numbers that were attached to rally planners that maybe had one lead separation from Proud Boys and OTH Keepers and specifically to OTH Keepers and DOJ charged defendants. When you’re looking at the legal strategies that he wanted to employ the arguments that you had behind closed doors, you know, with people like Rose and and Cipollone, when you look at that type of interviews that you saw, those type of depositions. And then when you see Cassidy Hutchinson and people like that talking about him removing the magnetometers, all of this leads to this thing that we have about Donald Trump is that he really is a tool of online trolls and conspiracy theorists and his attitude toward America is so flippant

and disrespectful that nobody should think that he’s fit for office. In that way, the committee has succeeded. The headline out of the committee hearing was the nine nothing vote to subpoena Donald Trump, which strikes me as largely symbolic because it’s unlikely he is going to sit under oath for any sort of testimony. There’s very limited clock. This morning or Was it this morning or was it last night he issued this with, like, a fourteen page response to the committee?

Right. Thankfully, you read it. I have not read it. I mean, it looked like something that the Unibomber in one of his, you know, less lucid moments would would would would would would would would would have. So Denver, just he give me a sense of of what Trump is saying the morning after.

What he’s saying if I could break this down, you know, for the audience really quickly

is It’s a combination of Peter Novarro’s immaculate deception document, Jenny Thomas believe systems. Rudy Giuliani believes is some Sydney Powell draft executive orders, and her wanting to use executive order one three eight four eight. To rationalize seizing voting machines and employing the Insurrection Act and deploying military troops. Phil Waldron, and his briefing that Meadows initially provided to the committee on foreign interference and the pathetic bizarre self identified cyber and sci fi experts who said the election was stolen by a combination of China, Venezuelan, Italian satellites. And many more.

That’s exactly how it read. And this sort of self franchising, this this narcissistic way of saying it the biggest crowd ever on January sixth. And then talking about the committee not looking into election fraud. And that’s that’s where it should be, you know, notwithstanding the legal cases and the fact that this has been just proven on a level that’s epic. So in reading this, it really was almost as if, you know, a combination of Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Phil Waldron, nosekeepers, Proud Boys, and Jenny Thomas were

screaming in his ear to write discreet. It is absolutely the ramblings of a madman. So essentially, it’s this bubbling stew of bat shit crazy. Yeah. Absolutely.

You want the the hearing yesterday. I’m interested in and and obviously, you’ve been immersed in a lot of the detail. One of the, you know, one of the challenges, of course, is, you know, when you have millions of documents, you know, thousands of tweets and maybe millions of, you know, all of this data to step back and say, okay, what are the top lines? What are the dazzling details? So, you know, stepping back from from this hearing, for you, what are the highlights?

What struck you as the as the most powerful moments of of that hearing. It was

mostly a summation. I mean, I knew all of it. I think, you know, what struck me was the Secret Service text messages or their communications, which really already sort of knew about. I mean, listen, we know about the massive security intelligence operations and logistics breakdown on January six with US capital police. And and the fact is there was just a lot of incompetence happening there.

And and, you know, the lack of, you know, communications and intelligence sharing struck me. But the thing that struck me the most I don’t know if it surprises people, was the November eleventh order and Milley’s testimony about the nonstandard practices of a bunch of low level hacks. Trying to push orders for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think that was on November eleventh. I absolutely it’s sort of tangentially, I would say, related to January sixth.

But, Charlie, let me tell you, that right there alone. Listen. If January sixth didn’t happen and that came

out, I think

that right there alone shows you when General Maily said nonstandard, how nonstandard the Trump administration was. But really, just how insane the Trump administration was. Do

you know or have a sense of what happened with the security breakdown? What happened with the Secret Service? I recall actually that you were tweeting before the ride in January six that all of the red lights were blinking. There was all sorts of indication So why was there not more security at the capital? Why did the secret service in the FBI not take this more?

Why would we caught so completely unprepared? There

definitely were intelligence documents from FBI field offices from other areas that were funneling into the United States capital, please. The issue was they were sort of buried in a bureaucratic landslide of documents and reports. And I think when you have people that can’t really understand what radicalization looks like. I think you had really sort of the, you know, senior evil, here no evil, speak no evil, sort of monking around in the bureaucratic layers that could make decision. So when you look at the United States capital police and what a lot of people don’t understand is that the the house sergeant arms and the senate sergeant arms are actually appointed.

By the leaders of their respective houses. So McConnell points to senate sergeant arms and Pelosi, the house sergeant arms. The architect of the capital was confirmed by the senate and the United States capital police chief does not have a vote on that capital police board of those three individuals that actually make up the fourth member that Capital Police Chief does not have a vote. So he had to officially ask for National Guard response. And I write about that in my book, the Breach.

Is that general honorary just eviscerated this bureaucratic meltdown and incompetence of intelligence and communications that were coming from you know, this board. That’s why everybody was fired and things of that nature. But really, what it comes down to is that there was just incompetence and the speed of technology is not there. The issue that we have, Charlie, and even with the committee, and the critiques that I have of that, which are not personal. They’ve done a fine job, but is that we can’t solve today’s problems tomorrow with yesterday’s technology.

Mhmm. We can’t do that anymore. We have to look at this as an information warfare battle space. And the untold story of January six is the data. It’s the fact that we’re in a new forever war.

And I just I’m just sort of stunned that we’re still fifteen months after the committee started almost two years later, we’re just now getting to a subpoena of Donald Trump. And then when you flip it, on the other side, it was a great job of getting that many people together. But with the thousands of interviews you talk about and the millions and or the thousands of documents, there’s tens of millions of lines of data. On a command and control level that we still need to look into more. So I wanna get to your critique

of of that in a moment. This staying with what happened yesterday. I thought that one of the more effective things they’d I mean, you know, again, the the committee has multiple, you know, jobs, including investigating, trying to figure out what happened, but then also communicating that to the court of public opinion. And I thought that the the montage that they showed of what Donald Trump knew and then what he said was very powerful, especially when when all of the testament, you know, Bill Barr says, you know, I told him this was complete bullshit the next day he goes out and, you know, Trump goes out and says exactly the same thing. Richard Donahue says, everything you’re hearing is complete bullshit.

There’s no truth. Trump repeats the lie. Bill Barr again specifically tells him you know, this did not happen in Pennsylvania, and Donald Trump just keeps rinsing and repeating. I thought that that was very very powerful. And again, there’s a lot of things that struck me about this, including the tape of how Nancy Pelosi and was actually asking for on the phone asking for help while Donald Trump was sitting in the dining room of the White House tweeting out attacks on on Mike Pence.

But let let’s go to some of these details. You wrote in the book very extensively about Roger Stone, and and you created this phone link map for Roger Stone, one of the, you know, high profile figures here. So what do we make of Stone’s role in all of this? They they showed up, you know, brief clip of him basically saying, you know, that even before the election, you’re gonna say, no, we won. Fuck you.

You know, let’s let’s, you know, skip the voting and get right to the violence of all people on earth. What ruled that Roger Stone play in Donald Trump’s planned insurrection. If I

had two words, to sum it up, it would be the ultimate facilitator. You

know, when

you look back to twenty sixteen and, you know, sort of the origination of the stop to steal moment as it looked like a cohesive strategy that was stoned. You know, they were preparing for the the Hillary Clinton election. But you also look at in his context and what he’s actually said in his past performance. And, Charlie, past performance is sometimes indicative of future performance. And this is a felon.

This is somebody who’s slimy. Right? And and look at who he actually associates with, whether it’s Proud Boys, oathkeepers, other right wing extremist groups, he actually self identifies. He’s with those individuals. And then when you see somebody who fought his call detailed records, he didn’t wanna give them to us.

And yet, we still can run his number against links. I know he was in direct contact within Rieketario and Stuart Rhodes. It’s very difficult to not allow common sense and analysis to come together to look at Roger Stone as sort of the middle of a hub and spoke operation that really, you know, sort of encompasses a legislative strategy an executive strategy, and a judicial strategy. He’s close to the president, and he’s connected to the rally planners, whether you could look at Alexander, You look at the Carolyn Rams, you look at Katrina Pearsons, he’s connected to the right wing extremist, and he’s connected to the White House and the Trump family. That’s pretty strong, is pretty compelling.

But then we have something else. Oh my. We have something else. How about his assistant, Kristen Davis? Mhmm.

Maybe she doesn’t practice operational security as well as other people. And maybe we do get her call records. Mhmm. And then we see she’s the one who’s also in touch with both keepers and Proud Boys. Now you have the assistance of what I call the fore horsemen of the grifferverse with Sydney Powell leading it.

Right? When you look at these individuals like Roger Stone, Christian Davis, was one of his communication routes. You know, Alex Jones? Who did he have? Owen Shroyer.

When you look at Mike Flynn, you had Tim Inlow. When you look at Steve Bannon, get Alexander Prey. Now you don’t know if these individuals actually know what they’re doing or saying, but these communication paths then open to rally planners or other extremist groups. I I heard an anchor yesterday ago, well, there’s almost nothing else we can learn about January six, and I actually laughed out loud. You know, the command and control infrastructure and the tens of thousands of links between certain groups and the millions of links that we have with text messages, whether they’re MMSs or SMSs, you’re looking at VoIP numbers or you’re looking at standard phone calls, whether they’re landline or cellphones, it’s massive link maps, massive clusters of individuals that for somebody who’s done counter terrorism forever can see those centers of gravity and say, holy crap.

The organization here was even more than we can imagine, and that’s why I wrote the book again. It wasn’t to critique the committee. It said we have so much more to do in this space because we are losing. They are winning. You know, there’s YouTube channels that have more people watch it in the far, right, than watch CNN.

You know, I get very frustrated because I’m not trying to be some kind of you know, chicken little, but if if we don’t understand the threat, and what a domestic terrorism attack is, like January six, If we don’t understand the threat, or we put our heads in the center, or we’re just worried about politics and optics every freaking damn day instead of just following the data when the data is hot,

when it’s

there right now, we’re gonna be in big trouble. It’s not me, you know, framing at people or saying the committee did a bad job, the book was even about that if people read it because you did, obviously. It’s not about that. It’s about the data is the new super hero, that’s the untold story. And if we don’t have technology, if we don’t have the ability to have our facts based analysis, go against these facts challenged individuals, Wearing

real Trump, what are you talking about there? Are you talking about actual real real time government surveillance of all of this? No. How would this happen? I think it’s understanding

that we’re in house to house warfare with people that are easily radicalized when you have people by Trump and their individuals pushing that out there. So, you know, my ideas and ideas of many is just to have sort of this ability, this private public partnerships to see where hashtags, memes, and certain types of information originate. Where they’re from groups that already have sort of a lineage or a history of lying where they’re sourcing as crap. I mean, Listen, if you’re getting your sourcing from the revolver, you’re probably not going to the right place. You understand what I’m saying, Charlie?

Oh, yeah. And how about I do understand. Right? How about foreign interference? Right?

So So we’re not gonna look at where this disinformation actually comes from, even from private groups. We’re not gonna look at accountability. We’re not gonna go out there, maybe in university classes or high school or talk about sourcing or what disinformation looks like, the government can’t do it. They just can’t move fast enough. It’s ridiculous to think the government can move fast enough, you know?

And know, we’re gonna have to have private public partnerships or private entities that just allow, like, almost like a social media dashboard or a warning dashboard. Like, listen. If you see the hashtag COVID nineteen forty eight, right, or all Jews or Nazis, which, you know, might originate from an Iranian, you know, troll farm, Maybe you should know it’s coming from a gosh, getting Iranian troll form. And maybe maybe there should be journalists and people like that out there reporting on this. Instead of just, you know, trying to make people happy through journalism and stuff that doesn’t matter anymore.

And I think, you know, and I’m allowed to say that because I’m not in politics and I’m not trying to

get shortly. So there you go. You know, when you talk about Raj or Stone, when you talk about these kinds of connections, you’re talking about this nexus between what Donald Trump was doing, the lying, and the planning, the overturning, the the the fake electors, and the actual violent extremist here. And and there were a number of suggestions about how close they were getting. I I think that there was they were talking about Jason Miller bragging while I really whipped up the base and then linking to a website that had all kinds of, you know, violent rhetoric about revolution, unbelievable bringing gallows because they don’t need electricity City, etcetera, all of this.

Has the committee connected the dots between what the the attempt to overturn the election, Roger Stone, and these groups like the oathkeeper. I mean, we are having these ongoing trials of exactly how violent, how seditious this conspiracy was. Have we connected all of the dots between the various actors here, do you think? You

know, I’ve

said this before. One of the the issues that chlamydia had was authorities. I don’t know if you know this, Charlie, but they can’t get certain types of data. Yep.

So

when you’re looking at call records, all we could get was to from and what type of communication medium they use, you know, codes for text messages and things like that. But I couldn’t get geo location or tower data. DOJ can. FBI can. So I think it’s gonna be up to them to even do more of the connective tissue for judicious conspirators and those individuals that we’re communicating.

However, we have tens of millions of lines of data on communication connectivity. And I think what the committee tried to do was showing the Roger Stone, you know, Danish video and trying to identify what he was saying. That was their attempt to do that. And I do believe it’s very difficult. Let’s give the committee a break here.

It’s very difficult to show how these like when we did the monster and how these link maps actually connect to the American public. It’s just very difficult. I think they could have done a little bit more now, but again, I don’t think we finalized how involved Roger Stone was, but also the Mike Flynn’s the Phil Waldrom’s, the Alex Jones, and even some of the other actors, you know, you know, the cyber guys that were, you know, doing the Antrim stuff or some of those kind of things were actually in direct contact with Mark Meadows. And, you know, you’re pretty smart about the Jason Miller stuff. Let me tell you this, Charlie.

Jason Miller, not only was riling up the base, but he was one of the first to actually formulate the antifa false flag strategy in the text message to bet. Mhmm. Right? Which I think should have been actually completely identified in this all the way down with larger Taylor Green doing that and other members of Congress active members who are pushing the NTPA theory. So Jason Miller is central to the type of communications and comms that we’re coming out of there.

So I think they did a fairly good job of connecting Roger Stone, but I think we need to do a lot more because you’re looking at actors at the second and third tier beneath him. That we’re really doing the, you know, the communication paths with multiple right wing extremist groups.

Okay. So let’s

talk about the book. And how pissed off the committee is with your book. I mean, you know, let’s I would give you a chance to respond to all of this. You know, there

was that

big story where the the book came out. Ex staffers unauthorized book about January sixth committee rankles members. They were all shocked about it. Committee staff members, and they’ll say they were infuriated by some of your comments earlier this summer during which you reveal private details about the staff’s work according to people involved with the investigation. Your appearances rattled others who work with the committee, and the rigelman eventually drew some anger from representative Liz Cheney.

Who had initially pushed for his hiring according to people familiar with the matter. So the sense that I’m getting is that there are people in the committee that are really angry with you and feel that somehow you have shibbed them. So

I wanna

give you a chance to push back on these dings. Yeah. Well, they

read the book now, so you saw that it it slowed down. The book did not ship anybody. That’s why I think, you know, when we did the untold story, they everybody knew I was so so data centric. And obviously, I had some issues with the committee with funding for the fusion centers and technology. But what I was doing in the book wasn’t any personal dates of anybody is that How do you make these decisions in a new environment?

Which when people read the book, like, oh, half this book isn’t about the committee at all. Yeah. It’s about the blending of open source intelligence with data. And a guy who’s done it for twenty years, and and did this well before the committee. But why did you publish the

book before they were even done with their hearing? Well,

I mean, for me, the data belongs to the American people, number one. Number two, when the book started to ship, we didn’t even know there was a final hearing on September twenty eighth. And and you know, everybody’s like, well, there’s no such thing as coincidences. Yeah. There is.

If you’ve been an analysis long enough and I remember shaking my head going. Son of a gun. You know, it’s like crap.

You know, this this doesn’t look great. So sort

of an accident, the committee should have been done by now. I’ll just say that. It’s been long enough. We’ve had plenty of data and evidence. But on the other hand, I think that what I say in the book about the data specifically where we need to go is is bigger than the committee.

It’s outside of the January sixth committee. And what I’ve done is is much more than ever just the nine months house in the January sixth committee. I’ve been looking at this data well before, and and I’ll be looking at it afterwards. But I also wanted to, and I hoped that when people read this book, they would say, man, the committees on the right track. They’re doing the right thing, which is what I say in the book, like, wow.

Look at the committees accomplished. It’s insanely good. They didn’t. And so there’s there’s sort of that balance, but this will need to get out now. And here’s the last thing.

Political violence is inherently political. And here we are on October fourteenth, and we’re gonna have the GOP take back to house. They’re looking good to do that. And about the senate hiccups maybe, So what I’m trying to tell people right now is that if we don’t get in front of this, if we don’t go a little bit faster, we’re in trouble. Now, slow and steady wins the race.

But fast and steady, be slow and steady. And

so this book came out in the time. We pushed it to the end of the year. And and nobody on the committee nobody in the committee knew you were working on this. Well, I

said I was gonna write a book back in April of twenty twenty one, The New York Times. I was already doing a book by then. That’s why a lot of this book isn’t about the committee at all. It’s about data. So everybody knew I was doing a book when I came on on April twenty twenty one.

I was in a New York Times article. So asked about I said, yeah. It’s not gonna be specifically about the committee. Initially, But then when I saw the data that was coming in, I said, you know what? It’s time to change directions.

We we are in trouble. I wanna get back to the substance of this, but I

wanna also wanna give you a chance to respond to some of the the the pushback that that you got because some of the book has been sort of a critique that the committee did not do x, y, or z. Or or had not yet finished it. And they issued a statement when the book came out, and this is the way the Washington Post reported it, underscored Rygeland’s limited knowledge of the investigation and through cold water on Regelman’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 and investigative work, road committee spokesperson, Tim Mulvey. Since his department, the committee has run down all the leads and digested and analyzed all of the information that arose from his work.

So you your response. True? Untrue.

No. Okay. Now, they didn’t they don’t even know all the leads and stuff because it’s impossible to if you don’t have the proper equipment and enough analysts, it’s very difficult to do it. And You know, I don’t think they were being purposefully untrue. I think they thought that, but that’s that’s not possible.

We even have an example. In the book I wrote about Kelly Searle trying to text the White House, landlines. And so if you’ve done an analysis, you don’t even have to be an intelligence person, Charlie, to say, hey, that’s pretty interesting. She probably had a prior contact. Like, who was it?

That was never followed up. And guess what we found? We found that Kelly Sorrell was texting Andrew Giuliani.

This should be

all over the place. And this is because of the book. It’s impossible if you don’t have enough resources. And you don’t have enough analysts and you don’t have the proper equipment to look at every single leak. That’s not possible.

You can’t follow-up on all of them. It’s it’s It’s ludicrous. So one of the things in the you you

do describe in the book a disagreement that you had with Liz Cheney. And apparently, it was at one point or other heated disagreement with Liz Cheney over how aggressively to pursue Clarence Thomas and Ginnie Thomas. We don’t have to get into all the weeds of of all of that. But, you know, just give me a sense of, you know,

are you and Liz still buds? Oh, and I I we haven’t talked in a while. I mean, I don’t know if she hates me or not. I I don’t think about that enough. I’ve done a great job with the committee, and I just don’t have time to worry about everybody’s feelings.

I just don’t. Leaving aside the feelings. I

I guess the debate between you and Liz Cheney seemed to boil down as she she thought that this would be a distraction to go off on the Thomas’ you are arguing, no, this is really significant data and Jenny Thomas’s stuff is just mind blowing. I actually can see both points of view here is that you you need to sort of, you know, stick with the the dominant narrative. On the other hand, the whole Gini Thomas story is not irrelevant. So give me give me just your sense of what role did Jenny Thomas play? And how this debate between Denver Riggleman and Liz Cheney over this has played out.

Yeah. And it’s funny you said that

in the book. I did understand where Liz was coming from if you remember that. And I said that in the book. I wanted to give an honest representation than you did. Yeah.

You know, Liz had a point. Right? And I had a point too. I think we were both right. But on this, Jenny Thomas is actually directly linked to the most powerful person in the Republican Party.

That’s Clarence Thomas. He has a lifetime appointment. She has been able to monetize her access helped her bottom line. And it also she was the avatar for how Qnon conspiracies had saturated every level the republican party

She was also an

individual who was forwarding, text messages from the chief of staff of Louie Gomer, and saying she was in direct contact with Jared Kushner.

She also is

a member of the council for national policy who are also in the text messages and who are actually working with Eastman. She’s also directly linked to Eastman. And then we find out later that she was sending emails supporting alternate electors to specific states, which looks like some of the states were directly out of Peter Navarro’s immaculate deception. I think Jenny Thomas, the text message that we found were actually the most important text messages, because it’s insight and what’s happening in the radicalization pipeline out there. And it also could possibly link all three branches of government.

You know, I I heard somebody the other day saying, well, this was an executive attack on the legislative branch. Right? Charlie? Mhmm. That’s what people are saying.

Well, there’s a lot of people in the legislative branch that we’re helping in that in that regards when you’re talking about stop to steal. And we still had a hundred and thirty nine representatives in the House. Vote to object to the electors, which is exactly what Jenny Thomas was talking about. And you also have her saying that, you know, the Biden crime family should be in gitmo in this belief, and you know, blockchain, QFS blockchain, watermark ballots that there’s some national guard, you know, secret operation. To go after the people who are de legitimizing, you know, who are stealing the election.

I mean, this stuff is groundbreaking. So you have the wife as the supreme court justice. Doing this. I think that is absolutely critical and she should have been subpoenaed. That’s just my opinion.

You know, based on the data that I saw, I was just following the data. You know, like, this is real. And, you know, we saw some other things initially. I thought it might be Clarence. It wasn’t, but we found that out.

We made sure. And so that’s that’s it. That’s it, Charlie. You know, is it? We’re just talking specifically about the data.

And and I try to stick to that. And I also try to do a fair representation that Liz had a point about the direction of it. This

is bigger than Trump. This is much bigger than Trump. This stuff is baked in. Well, I mean, it is it is really stunning, you know, to read, you know, the wife of of the US Supreme Court Justice is expressing her views about the stolen election offering legal and congressional strategies for overturning the election. And then tweeting some of the woulliest, most insane conspiracy theories.

It is so bizarre. Nothing so far directly ties you know, justice Thomas himself to it, but you are skeptical that the justice and Jenny kept a really strict firewall that they never talked about any of this stuff that he that she that her insanity had no influence on him. You’re a little skeptical

about that? Yes. Yeah. Good skeptical.

You know, obviously,

I sent you a frustration in in catching up with with the data. You know, I share this frustration, but I also share sort of this wider frustration that it feels now like we have all of this evidence saying you plan to overturn this election. You wanted to block the peaceful transfer of power. You foam in it in this direction, and the Trump world’s response is damn straight. We did it, and we do it again.

We’re proud of it. Yes. No. The night of January six, I I keep coming back to this. The night of January six, about six o’clock at night.

After all of the bloodshed, after all of the terror, after, you know, people had died. Donald Trump sat in the White House and tweeted out, these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long, go home with love and in peace, remember this day forever. So in case there was any doubt, right from the beginning, Donald Trump was planning to celebrate this. To praise it, to say he loves these people, that they were great patriots and that the day the attack on the capital wouldn’t live in infamy. But would remember we should remember this day forever like what, you know.

So I I guess this is the problem, you know. Does America give a shit about this? And Trump world seems to be sort of going, give give us all the evidence of all of things we did. Yeah. We did all of that stuff and we’re glad and we’re proud of it.

Right? I mean, how

do you how do you counter that? You

know, you know,

when

the cult leader speaks, people listen. Right? That’s the first thing. The second thing, you know, I talk about sort of this undertone of sort of this self identification of Christian nationalism, which has been really interesting. Right, Charlie?

And also — Yeah. — this apocalyptic good against evil battle. And I think a lot of individuals, you know, if they’re very religious or they believe they have a direct link to the supernatural. Mhmm. A lot of conspiracy theorist people that you know, nine eleven Crushers or people that are sort of in tune with this or they’re susceptible to conspiracies like Jenny.

I think they’re into this good against evil battle. Yeah. The Democrats are evil satanists, cabal, you know, a dream from drinking, you know, people. And I’ve I’ve said before and I say this in the breach, I think we have to fight regimes. I think we’re looking at three to five percent of the right that we can really adjust and readjust back to sort of fax based thinking.

But right now, you know, when you look at what’s going in the world here, you said something pretty profound as to people care. I was at a banquet last night with hundreds and hundreds of people. And out of that, I think, maybe four to five, we even aware there was a hearing that day. And this isn’t Charlotte’s phone. I guess what I’m saying is that, you know, I’m look looking around, and I’m like,

you know,

the most important thing, and I think the committee has stressed this as protected democracy. And that’s where I’ve been so proud of the committee. You know, but the thing for me is that we almost need to take a data baseball bat, you know, and you have to go to these people. And actually, you have to engage with everybody signally because in the DC sort of universe or in the big urban universe is is completely separate from where I’m out here. In rural Virginia.

There’s there’s no comparison. And how do we reach those individuals? And I would tell you right now that It’s so odd to talk about fox talking points and stuff like that, but there was an attorney on last night that they’d already proven this. The subpoena actually gives Trump oxygen. It’s it’s billows.

And the issue that you have now, right, is that there are people out here. When I talk to them, they do say and I had a person say this, Charlie, and I wanna tell this to the audience. And I I just and why I wrote the book. They said, we’ll take crazy over incompetent. So

give me your sense, and and you touched on this when you said, you know, if Donald Trump disappears, this is really, you know, goes much deeper. It is breakeven. I I completely agree with you. If he disses appeared tomorrow. He doesn’t mean that we returned to sanity.

But, you know, there’s been this ongoing debate about, you know, whether or not he be held legally accountable. And there are some people, some people on our team who will say, yeah. I mean, you know, Trump is is seditious, but If the Department of Justice actually charges him, the blowback will be too much. It will be too divisive. It will tear apart the fabric of the country.

I would argue that it it will tear apart the country if he has not held accountable, but you you follow this stuff very, very closely. I don’t think we should have any illusions that, you know, an indictment of Donald Trump would set off a firestorm. Wouldn’t it? I guess the question would be how big and how bad? What do you think?

First of all,

if the evidence, the data, and the facts support an indictment by the DOJ for Donald Trump, they should do it regardless of what the book might be. I agree. I I know that might scare some people, and it should. But, Charlie, if everybody’s above the law or they’re somehow treated especially on doing something so heinous, and You know, I’ve I’ve talked about this even with people like Jimmy, but also the sitting congressman and senators were that were on the text messages, how they were treated with kid gloves. Was another thing I had an issue with even though I understand it.

Right? I can have an issue with something and still understand why not right, Charlie, which is I think something in political discourse when you’re tribes. You’re like, well, Denver says this. Well, I’m not saying somebody did a bad job, damn it. I’m saying that there’s other things I need to do.

Okay. So if

this happens, how you because there is this growing anger out there. There is this militants. There is this rhetoric about political violence and

civil war what would we be looking at? What would happen? Massive blowback. If he’s indicted, first of all, now he takes the mantle of political you know, murder, right, or political prisoner. Mhmm.

That’s what’s gonna happen. It’s already happening. We talked about that rambling street of hell. That he put out, you know, just, you know, last night or or whatnot. So I think we do see violence.

I think we see specific parts of violence maybe in state capitals things of that nature. But we also see this growing militancy. And people thinking that the deep state is attacking, you know, sort of the working class Americans. Right? Those people who believe in hard work and and aren’t elite.

Right? I’ll put that in quotes. Right, brother. So I think you’re gonna see some very bad things if he’s indicted. But on the other hand, Charlie, I’m showing agreement with you is that, is everything a political consideration?

If it is, then we just be honest about it. And people will know that there’s a different standard of justice depending on who you are. And I think long term, that’s even more damaging. Than taking that initial hit for an indictment for Donald Trump if the facts and data lead that way. And I’m with you.

Like, I I don’t know if I can agree with you anymore. How about that, Charlie? Okay.

So you you you mentioned that we’re talking about, you know, three to five percent and the extreme conspiracy theorist reticle is three to five percent of the right So what about the the sort of the passive fellow travelers? You know, the people that Jonathan Chake writes about were, you know, the the quote unquote normal Republicans that figure, well, I I don’t have to take these folks on. I’ll go along with them because I think I’ll get my agenda and at some point, we’ll be able to control them. Would it make a difference if more quote unquote normie Republicans more grown up Republicans, more responsible Republicans were to stand up and push back against us because right now, as you know, There’s nothing. I mean absolutely nothing.

What was

the latest poll, Charlie, over sixty percent of Republicans still want Trump to

run? Yes. So what are we talking

about on the normies? And by the way, out of that sixty percent, who answered that poll, honestly. And when you look at that way, there’s a lot of people who wanna answer the phone because they think the deep state is tracking them. So, what’s the real number? And if it’s seventy percent, seventy five percent, how many normies are there?

Yeah. That’s great. Are those normies Republican normies answering those poll questions, like, yeah, I still want Trump to run. Yeah. You know, gas was five dollars a gallon, four months ago, the hell if I’m doing that.

You know, inflation’s at eight point five percent CPI, you know, is through the roof. We’re going into a recession. And I’m not paying five dollars for a loan for Brad damn it. And I’ve heard that. I think, yes, I think you do need to stand up, but it’s really difficult.

If you’re in a committee meeting with seventy people and you’re the only one who thinks the election wasn’t stolen, Are you going to stand up on the sixty nine other people and say, you know what? Listen everybody. You need to stop, cuff, and glue. And realize this isn’t true. Or how do you even approach that with that many people?

I’ve had to do it and it’s

not comfortable. Well, and and therefore, you you get, you know, the what has now become, you know, old news, you know, the Ted cruises of the world who, you know, will there and, you know, have your wife called ugly, but and you suck up to the guy or or Mitch McConnell, what must be going on in his head? You know, he had a chance to hold to hold Donald Trump accountable and any whipped on it, even though he clearly understood exactly what Donald Trump did on January sixth, his wife, Elaine Chow, made it very, very clear, you know, that she resigned in protest, that she could not, you know, do this anymore. Donald Trump is, you know, using anti Chinese slurs against her. And Mitch McConnell is there basically going on, you know, why should I speak out against this at this point?

But you know, what is he? He waiting for somebody else to come along? He’s waiting for the week meteor of death, you know, to to to rescue us all from this. Wait waiting for a patriotic big mac, you know, hamburger to take out Donald what? I don’t know what these folks are thinking internally.

Did you say the sweet meteor of death?

I did. I’m gonna have to write that down. Man, it’s very good. A smod. S n.

We need a small theory. I think I think what you’re saying is polling. Charlie, you’ve been doing this longer than me, man. But, man, if the polling at the top five things are not January six was they’re not. I mean, it’s it’s that’s ridiculous to think it is.

If it’s not, and McConnell’s trying to hold the senate, and he thinks there’s a bigger vision for him, Of course, he’s gonna support Hershel Walker. Of course, he’s not gonna go after Donald Trump even though he comes after his wife. And that’s the stuff that is fascinating. Because I’m telling you right now, if Donald Trump came after my wife, right, is a in in a political way or in a way like that, Don’t get me wrong if I find you in an alley. We’re throwing dap.

So that’s just the way it is. And and I don’t get it. I just don’t But if if they think there’s a bigger sort of good against evil vision here and that Trump is just temporary and the grand scheme of things, Maybe that’s what they’re thinking. I I don’t know. I don’t know.

You

know, in this onion of iron news that we have here, and I know that Mona Churn wrote about this the other day, we have the right celebrating, you know, manhood and, you know, who is more manly, who is more masculine. Tucker Carlson, you know, keeps talking about, you know, the need for, you know, men do radiate their testicles, etcetera. But what you’re seeing is one Republican after another voluntarily emasculate themselves in order to get along with Donald Trump. And and Donald Trump looks at these guys, and he doesn’t respect the Lindsey Grams and Ted cruises, you know, for for truck going under. He despises them.

And they know he despises them and yet they’re willing to go along with it because they actually all hold their manhood so cheap.

I guess that’s the thing now and the GOP is to give away your milk money as soon as the bully comes up to you in the school yard. Right? And then, you know, you give away your milk money, you go and radiate your testicles to make you feel better. Not quite sure how that works, you know. And maybe it is smog.

Maybe it is

a sweet meteor calendar, but, you know, I don’t know if

that hope is a viable course of strategy or a viable course. You know? I I did have a a commander said that Hope, you know, is an viable course of action. And it’s not. And so I just wonder is somebody just gonna stand up in a position like McConnell or in a position like McCarthy?

Or in a position like scalise, which is still, you know, if somebody goes, Sam, say, listen. This isn’t even the GOP anymore. We’re sorry. That we belly crawled for this freak show out in Florida. But I don’t think that’ll ever happen.

You lose your election No.

You you will lose your life. I mean, we we’ve seen okay. I I almost forgot to ask you about this because you also made some pretty big news over the last week because And again, just to give, you know, listeners a little bit of background, I mean, Denver, you have been, you know, a a pretty strong hard line conservative Republican. Throughout your entire career. There’s no question about, you know, you know, what you know, what what you stood for.

And yet and this was one of the big questions is, would would people across the line. No. Adam Kinzinger has now made some endorsements across the line and you in Virginia cut an ad for your fellow Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, who is one of the last remaining real centrist in Congress. So tell me about that. How did that come about?

That you are running ads for a Democratic incumbent member of Congress? I

gotta tell you, you know, Abi and I had a great relationship in Congress, you know, with world broadband legislation, and we had some pretty feisty policy differences. But Abby is smart and she never backed down from me. We would actually argue on the House for sometimes. She’s like, I’m so disappointed in US and you didn’t like the Yoda against the democrats. And, you know, so we became friends because of that.

Like, we actually work together. And then when you see somebody like she’s running against, that’s an election denier and said awful things about, you know, pregnancy and rape. There’s one thing that Abigail Spanberger is and that’s somebody who defends democracy has taken a oath. We have a shared background in intelligence, and she is a decent caring person. And and she does care.

And I’m not it’s not even lip service, or I wouldn’t do it. Charlie, you know me well enough. Like, If I think you’re a shill or a fraud, you might as well get the hell out of the way. First, you’re gonna hate me anyway. So, I mean, there you go.

Being first in the door on that was rough though, just like being the first republican against QAnon and the first to do the same wedding. I feel like I get get my face ripped off. And I think that’s why after this committee experience and the book and what’s happened to me in politics, you almost wanna take a step back. Right? And when I talk to you, Charlie, it’s it’s with this sort of intellectual respect, and that’s what I had with AbbVie, that you can disagree with me.

But I want people to know I’m coming from it from a good heart. It’s not to chill. You know, this book is a drop in the bucket for me. I didn’t need it financially. And you know, but I thought I had to do it because the military and the government trained me to do this.

And I I felt compelled because I I’m scared. And it’s very personal to me. And five minutes after the sixty minutes hit, my wife received a call of silverback. Those death

threats

and saying awful things about her and me because she was on the sixty minutes. And I have had hundreds of death threats. I have had actually people you know, do things to my vehicle. It’s been so I don’t care. If somebody says, old Denver, you know, must have timed it this way or he didn’t know anything or things like that.

I know a damn lot because I lived it and I lived it as a counterterrorism analyst. I lived it as a data analyst. I lived it behind the door a politician, the freedom caucus. I lived it when I was set out changing the sexual orientation of children. I lived it with the death threats.

I have lived it. I lived it on January ninth. Three days after the freaking January sixth in his election, I sent a report to Liz Cheney that already identified the white supremacists groups and the data in what happened three days afterwards. So, yeah, I am personally involved well before a committee, well before January sixth about the dangers of radical and how we can use data to identify where that radicalization is coming from, that is it. And if people don’t like it, don’t buy the book.

But if you like it by, give me a shot. Because when you read it, it’s not a big critique. It’s not some chatty, Kathy BS. It’s like where can we go with people who’ve been trained in data and the fact is people who have been trained in data are attacking us. So that is why I wrote it, buddy.

And Abi is down the line with this type of facts based. And tell me to truth, Abby has pissed off Nancy Pelosi many times. And she is very free think and I think the free thinkers and the people who aren’t afraid, right, to sort of say, hey, this was great, but maybe we can improve it here. Maybe this is a wrong way to go. Those are the people

we need to serve, not just, yes, men and women underneath people like Trump. So maybe we gotta end on a bit of good news, Denver. Sure. It’s the weekend, and you make your own whiskey. I do.

Or is it bourbon? You make whiskey and bourbon? Bourbon and rye whiskey,

honey rye whiskey, and we have a rum coming out now,

so we’re pretty excited about that. Okay. So, you know, life is still good. When you can go out back and you have whiskey and rum and bourbon by the barrel. By the barrel.

You’re right.

I mean, by the barrel.

It’s amazing

how much whiskey we have. I would just let you

know. Okay.

Denver Riggleman, thank you so much coming back on the podcast. The book is the Breach. Always appreciate you coming on the Bulwark podcast. Charlie, I

appreciate you. Thank you for your wanna stay and being the guy

you are. I appreciate you. And thank you all for listening to this weekend’s Bulwark podcast. I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back on Monday and we’ll do this all over again.

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