A few months ago, I read Liz Cheney’s extraordinary book, Oath and Honor: a Memoir and a Warning, which leads you through the work of the Congressional Select Committee’s investigation of Donald Trump after the January 6 invasion of the Capitol. You obviously remember that Cheney was one of the two Republicans on the Committee, the other being Adam Kitzinger. Neither Cheney or Kitzinger were able to remain in Congress because of their participation in this important Committee.

But what you might not know is that there was another Republican involved in the Select Committee, a former Congressman from Virginia named Denver Riggleman. Riggleman was not a member of the Committee (he had already left Congress), but was an important senior member of the Committee staff. And he wrote a book as well, which I have just finished reading, called The Breach. It was as good and as informative as Liz Cheney’s book.

Riggleman spent one term as the Republican Congressman from Virginia’s 5th District (which includes Charlottesville and Lynchberg), now represented by Republican John McGuire. He was doomed to lose his spot because he is one of those rare politicians, a moderate Republican who has integrity. You may have seen Riggleman recently, as he is one of those moderate and intelligent voices that sometimes show up as a commentator on CNN (not one of those Republican shills that they include on their panel shows). Whenever I have seen him, I have noted that he seems like an intelligent guy, but I never thought more about him until I ran across this book. Riggleman is now contemplating the possibility of running for Governor of Virginia; the election is this year, November 4, 2025. Riggleman is only 54 years old. He would run as an Independent.

Denver Riggleman is a very complex man with a surprising background. His family was about a dysfunctional as they come. He was born and raised in Manassas, went to several community colleges before finding himself at the University of Virginia from which he graduated, and spent 15 years in the Air Force. He has two important characteristics: one, he is very, very smart and technologically savvy, and two, he knows he is very, very smart and technologically savvy and doesn’t mind letting you know. After he left the Air Force and before he ran for Congress, he ran a high tech company called Analytics Warehouse which was an NSA contractor. (He and his wife also have or had a distillery near Charlottesville.)

His job for the Select Committee was to analyze the telephone records of individuals who had attracted the attention of the Committee, and his team’s analysis was of major importance. Yet, some of their findings were not part of the Committee’s report, and many of them form the substance of this book.

Some of the conclusions? First, the Jan 6 revolt was long planned. Second, the planning included a lot of activity by leaders of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and other similar groups, and these leaders were in contact on a regular basis with people on Trump’s team. Third, the point man for all of this was Mark Meadows, whose telephone records show many contacts with these groups.

Now, it is true that the analysis was limited to who called whom and when, and could not get into the substance of the phone calls. But the patterns are clear.

The book discusses many topics, including not only the January 6 plans, but other plans to challenge the elections (and the plans to challenge the elections, Riggleman shows, were also not spontaneous, but planned well before the election itself), questions relating to the lack of timely security at the Capitol (he believes that the blame here is in fact shared by the White House and by Congressional leadership), and has chapters regarding various individuals involved in all of this (some come out better than others), including Ginni Thomas. Let me just say this: he does not have much use for Ginni Thomas or her husband.

He weaves through all of this his own unusual history, his rough childhood, his venture into and out of the Mormon church, his time in the Air Force and his development of his technical expertise, his use of what he learned as a security contractor, his now 35 year old marriage and family, including his fraught relationship with his ultra ultra ultra conservative mother.

The Breach was published in 2022, so it isn’t up to date, but that’s just as well. Added to the Cheney book, it tells what as much as you need to know, I think, about what led to January 6, how January 6 unfurled, and how the Committee went about its important investigation.