Five unresolved questions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a screen during a meeting of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Canon House Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 19, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

America is coming up on the three-year anniversary of the day former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. The attack upended the orderly and peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden during Congress’ certification of the 2020 election and ultimately resulted in the loss of seven lives and dozens of injuries to law enforcement officers.

The FBI has arrested more than 1,200 people on federal charges related to the siege of the Capitol. The leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — two far-right extremist groups — are already serving long prison sentences for seditious conspiracy, and hundreds of others have pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries on various charges.

Trump himself faces 18 charges related to the effort to overturn the election across two separate cases, one brought by a special counsel and the other by the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney. (Trump faces separate felony charges related to his allegedly mishandling classified documents and falsifying business records, and he’s also party to a civil fraud trial that could shut down his businesses.)

Despite an 814-page report by the now-disbanded House Select January 6 Committee, and hundreds of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits, significant questions remain unanswered about how the attack on the Capitol was organized and the extent to which the actions of the violent mob were coordinated with the effort by Trump and his allies in Congress to thwart the transfer of power.

Here are five to monitor during 2024:

One tantalizing and as yet unexplained connection between the militants and a member of Congress came to light through internal messages showing that a member of the Oath Keepers wanted to assist Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Trump’s former White House physician, on Jan. 6.

“Dr. Ronnie Jackson [sic] – on the move,” an unidentified Oath Keeper wrote in a chat log that was filed in federal court by Edward Vallejo, one of the group’s members who is now serving a three-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy. “Needs protection. If anyone inside cover him. He has critical data to protect.”

The chats show that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — also ultimately convicted of seditious conspiracy — responded: “Give him my cell.”

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) shakes hands with Stephen Miller, a former senior advisor for policy to President Donald Trump, as they leave a GOP caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on Jan. 25, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who served as vice chair of the House Select January 6 Committee, told Terry Gross, host of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” that the committee’s efforts to investigate the episode hit a dead-end.

“The Department of Justice obviously has tools that the select committee did not have,” Cheney told Gross. “And I do think they are the best place to get to the bottom of, why were the Oath Keepers talking about Ronny Jackson, and exactly what data did he have that they thought should be protected?”

An email from Raw Story to Jackson seeking comment on why his name came up in the Oath Keepers’ communications went unreturned.

The Oath Keepers prosecution revealed that Rhodes was determined to continue the fight after law enforcement flushed the rioters out of the Capitol on Jan. 6. After regrouping members of the Oath Keepers who went inside the Capitol, Rhodes and his cohorts walked to the nearby Phoenix Hotel.

Gathered with other members in a private suite at the hotel, Rhodes reportedly put in a call over speaker phone to one of his contacts as other members listened. North Carolina Oath Keeper William Todd Wilson heard “Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” according to a government court filing.

Stewart Rhodes (Photo by Nicholas Kamm for AFP)

“This individual denied Rhodes’s request to speak directly with President Trump,” the filing continues.

Wilson pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding before trial. The identity of the Oath Keepers’ liaison to Trump has never come to light. The liaison’s identity and the circumstances surrounding their refusal to put Rhodes in touch with the former president could shed light on whether Trump used surrogates to communicate with militant groups about coordinating an attack on the Capitol to thwart the transfer of power.

Then-President Trump and his allies undertook a feverish campaign to lobby members of Congress to object to the certification of the electoral vote based on bogus claims of election fraud, including a briefing with House members on Dec. 21, 2020. Among the 10 members was Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — and recently a contender for House speaker.

Records uncovered by the House Select January 6 Committee indicate that Jordan’s communications with Trump continued right up to Jan. 6, including at least two phone calls. Jordan defied a subpoena from the committee, refusing to testify or turn over documents, and the substance of his phone conversations with Trump on Jan. 6 remains unknown.

As with Jackson, the committee ran into roadblocks, and the final report suggests that the Department of Justice might be more successful in getting to the bottom of Jordan’s role. Jordan, the report said, “appears to have had materially relevant communications with Donald Trump and others in the White House.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speaking with attendees at the 2021 AmericaFest. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Calls from Raw Story to Jordan’s office seeking clarification for this story went unreturned.

“I think there’s no question that he has — that Jim Jordan has something to hid, probably a lot to hide,” Cheney told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace in early December. “If you could go back and look at the phone records as well as what he’s said himself about his discussions and his conversations with Donald Trump, there’s a significant role he played in the lead-up to that. He was clearly one of the masterminds in terms of helping facilitate Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.”

The Proud Boys, rivaled in magnitude only by the Oath Keepers, provided the engine of the attack on the Capitol. Dozens of the neo-fascist gang’s members have been arrested since Jan. 6, and leaders such as former Chairman Enrique Tarrio have been convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Weeks before the 2020 election, then-President Trump galvanized the Proud Boys and the larger universe of violent pro-Trump extremists when he told them during the Sept. 29 presidential debate: “Stand back and stand by.”

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Following outrage over his comment, Trump tried to distance himself from the Proud Boys, telling reporters “they have to stand down,” and that they should “let law enforcement do the work.”

But internal chats submitted into evidence during Tarrio’s seditious conspiracy trial suggest that there was more communication between the former president’s camp and the Proud Boys behind the scenes than Trump may have let on publicly at the time.

Prosecutors introduced a text message from Tarrio to Jeremy Bertino, a trusted Proud Boys lieutenant, on Nov. 8, after major news organizations called the election for Joe Biden.

Enrique Tarrio, then the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, is seen with Jeremy Bertino at a "Stop the Steal" rally against the results of the U.S. presidential election outside the Georgia State Capitol on Nov. 18, 2020 in Atlanta, Ga. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Bertino reported to Tarrio that he planned to mobilize a group of Proud Boys to rally in support of Trump that afternoon.

Responding to Bertino’s text, Tarrio cautioned: “The campaign asked us to not wear colors to these events.”

Notwithstanding his comment to Bertino, Tarrio has insisted that there was no connection between himself and Trump, who will have the power to pardon him if he is elected president again in 2024. Following his conviction, Tarrio told the New York Times that he met with federal prosecutors in Miami in 2022, and that he refused to implicate Trump in a criminal conspiracy in exchange for leniency.

Bertino, who is still awaiting sentencing, did not respond to a request for comment forwarded through his lawyer from Raw Story.

Joe Oltmann and Matthew DePerno were hardly household names before the 2020 election: Oltmann was a conservative podcaster in Colorado, while DePerno practiced law in Michigan.

But in the run-up to Jan. 6, the two men emerged as key players in a frenzied effort to gin up wild claims of election fraud that would provide legitimacy to Trump’s effort to hold on to power.

Oltmann, for his part, helped launch a conspiracy theory spread by Trump-friendly media outlets such as One America News Network and Newsmax — and amplified by Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — that centered on the baseless claim that Dominion Voting Systems electronically manipulated the 2020 vote.

Oltmann claimed that he infiltrated a secret conference call of “antifa journalists” and overheard a man identified as Eric “the Dominion guy” say, “Don’t worry about the election. Trump is going to win. I made f---ing sure of that.”

Oltmann linked the purported comments to Eric Coomer, then employed as director of product strategy and security at Dominion. Coomer has denied Oltmann’s claim.

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A Colorado judge opined that “the sheer implausibility of the claims” Oltmann made after the election should have prompted his listeners to question their “veracity,” and concluded that “Oltmann’s statements regarding that conference are probably false.”

Meanwhile, DePerno filed a lawsuit challenging the election results in Michigan based on a clerical error that initially showed Biden leading in Antrim County, a rural, Republican-leaning county, but were easily corrected to show that Trump carried the county by a wide margin.

But through his lawsuit, DePerno was able to obtain an order from a judge allowing “forensic imaging” of the Dominion voting machines.

A team hired by Powell extracted the data, and a company called Allied Security Operations Group used it to produce a report reaching the wild conclusion “that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”

DePerno claimed that the review of the county’s election results revealed “an issue of national security,” and the report reached the desk of President Trump in mid-December 2020. But then-Attorney General William P. Barr called the report “amateurish,” and a former Trump administration official responsible for election security said it was “factually inaccurate.”

With those track records of results, Oltmann and DePerno together obtained a meeting with at least one State Department official on Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump’s supporters rampaged through the Capitol.

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Robert A. Destro, then serving as the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, has confirmed to the Washington Post that he met with the two men at the State Department on Jan. 6.

What exactly they discussed remains unknown, as well as what, if any, action was taken as a result of the meeting. Destro declined to reveal the substance of the talks to the Post.

Oltmann has said on his podcast that officials at the State Department reacted in shock when he shared information about purported election fraud and said, “If this is true, this is a coup,” according to the Post. DePerno, who mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Michigan attorney general in 2022, wrote on a campaign questionnaire: “On January 6, 2021, I was in the State Department briefing Mike Pompeo’s staff on how the election was stolen. (NOTE to reader: don’t tell the Feds!)”

Oltmann and DePerno could not be reached for comment for this story. DePerno was indicted by a special prosecutor in Michigan earlier this year after being accused of taking part in an unlawful scheme to breach voting tabulators in Roscommon, Barry and Missaukee counties following the 2020 election.

Whatever they talked about and what, if anything, came out of the meeting, Destro’s predecessor at the State Department told the Post that such a meeting would be highly irregular.

“I cannot understand why anyone who was examining U.S. election practices and who was not foreign would have had a meeting with the State Department,” Virginia Bennett said. “The State Department has no authority from statute or other mandate over U.S. elections. Period. End of sentence.”

WatchGuard Threat Lab: rise in threat actors exploiting remote access software

SEATTLE – Dec. 6, 2023 – WatchGuard Technologies, a global leader in unified cybersecurity, today announced the findings of its latest Internet Security Report, detailing the top malware trends and network and endpoint security threats analyzed by WatchGuard Threat Lab researchers.

Key findings from the data show increasing instances of remote access software abuse, the rise of cyber adversaries using password-stealers and info-stealers to thieve valuable credentials, and threat actors pivoting from utilizing scripting to employing other living-off-the-land techniques to initiate an endpoint attack.

“Threat actors continue using different tools and methods in their attack campaigns, making it critical for organizations to keep abreast of the latest tactics to fortify their security strategy,” said Corey Nachreiner, chief security officer at WatchGuard. “Modern security platforms that include firewalls and endpoint protection software can deliver enhanced protection for networks and devices. But when it comes to attacks that employ social engineering tactics, the end user becomes the last line of defense between malicious actors and their success in infiltrating an organization. It’s important for organizations to provide social engineering education as well as adopt a unified security approach that provides layers of defense, which can be administered effectively by managed service providers.”

Among the key findings, the latest Internet Security Report featuring data from Q3 2023 showed:

Consistent with WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform approach and the WatchGuard Threat Lab’s previous quarterly research updates, the data analyzed in this quarterly report is based on anonymized, aggregated threat intelligence from active WatchGuard network and endpoint products whose owners have opted to share in direct support of WatchGuard’s research efforts.

For a more in-depth view of WatchGuard’s research, read the complete Q3 2023 Internet Security Report here: https://www.watchguard.com/wgrd-resource-center/security-report-q3-2023.