The White House switchboard connected a phone call to a U.S. Capitol rioter during the Jan. 6 coup, according to Denver Riggleman, the former Fifth District congressman and an ex-military intelligence officer.
Riggleman, who was effectively ousted from Congress in a 2020 Republican primary by Liberty University associate athletics director Bob Good, served as a senior technical advisor to the House Jan. 6 Committee, leading the search for phone records and other digital clues tied to the attack on the Capitol.
The phone call from the White House to a rioter would seem to be another in a line of smoking guns connecting the Trump inner circle to the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening. That’s a big, pretty big ‘a-ha’ moment,” Riggleman told “60 Minutes: correspondent Bill Whitaker in an interview that will air Sunday night.
Specific White House phone numbers are kept secret. In a soon-to-be-released book, Riggleman revealed that he had begged the Jan. 6 Committee to push harder to identify the numbers.
“I only know one end of that call,” Riggleman said. “I don’t know the White House end, which I believe is more important. But the thing is the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”
Whitaker, playing devil’s advocate, asked Riggleman if there could be a “simple, innocent explanation” for the call.
“Was it an accidental call? When the White House just happened to call numbers that somebody misdialed a rioter that day, on Jan. 6th? Probably not,” Riggleman answered.
