‘The Breach – the Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th’ is a 2022 book by Denver Riggleman, assisted by Hunter Walker. It is the story of the January 6th 2021 US Capitol Insurrection as told through the lens of cutting edge data technology analysis which reveals the connections and correspondence of those insurrectionists and plotters of an attempted coup in the months before and after the violent attack to stop the peaceful transfer of American power following the 2020 election of Joe Biden to the office of President of the United States of America. Riggleman is uniquely qualified to tell this story as a US Air Force veteran of many conflicts around the globe, a National Security Agency advisor, CEO of multiple support companies to the Department of Defense, a former Virginia Republican member of the US House of Representatives, and the senior technical advisor for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol.

It has now been two years since a mob of radicalized and misguided Donald Trump supporters unleashed a deadly wave of political violence against their own country in Washington D.C. Overdosed on toxic conspiracy-based disinformation and right-wing extremist propaganda, a riotous mob of religious zealots and domestic terrorists pushed past the boundaries defending America’s Constitutional process to threaten peace in our Republic and our sacred rule of law in an attempt to replace our traditions of a peaceful transition of power with a violent coup to prop up a tinpot autocratic wannabe. Trump’s mob of deplorables who had been fomented to rebellion by their dear leader set up a gallows on the ground of the US Capitol and went hunting for the leaders of our federal government in the US Capitol that day who they considered to be the enemies of their political fuhrer. Among their targets were the sitting President’s own Vice President, Mike Pence; and from the other political party, then Speaker of the US House of Reps, Nancy Pelosi. They would not obtain either of those two targets on that fateful day, but a sympathizer of the mob’s politics would go on to viciously and brutally attack Speaker Pelosi’s husband in his own home in the last months of the following year. Former VP Pence carried out his Constitutional duty to certify the election on the day of the insurrection, would publicly break with Trump over what was the right call to make on the floor of Congress during the 2020 POTUS election certification on the floor of the US Congress, but has ultimately proven to assume the cowardly position of failing to vocally oppose Trump’s seditious and un-American posture on the day of the attack and since.

But who were the prime movers of the January 6th Insurrection and wider plot to attempt a coup for Trump’s autocratic ambitions? As former Republican Freedom Caucus member Denver Riggleman points out in this book; “The January 6th plot had a political arm, a media arm, a military arm, and a legal one.” Drawing from phone records, sworn eyewitness testimony, and a plethora of other top-notch resources; Riggleman pulls back the curtain on a much wider and deeper plot than even the bulk of Trump’s most ardent critics had imagined could be the case. From Trump’s own feverish attempts to obfuscate important factual information to retired General Michael Flynn’s efforts to involve military assets against long-standing American institutions and best practices, from clownishly frivolous legal antics by Trump’s allied law counselors to the endless and shameless disinformation campaign waged by Trump’s lackeys on right-wing media platforms such as FOX News and Info Wars – Riggleman accomplishes a major feat in generating an image of Trump world’s daunting web of deceit and disunion.

Also worth noting about The Breach and its author is Riggleman’s personal account of the way in which the right-wing disinformation silos had an effect in his own life with painful divisions within his own family. This is an interesting although unfortunate element of the dynamic many of us have felt throughout the Trump years in the American body politic. Riggleman also provides a short account of his experiences with being immersed in and struggles breaking free from cultish religious environments – which is another portion of this book to which I can unfortunately relate. It would seem that these experiences escaping the grip of cult groups helped both Riggleman and me to discern early on the grave threat posed by the personality cult that formed around the disgraced ex-President Trump and the QAnon conspiracy crowd still driving a major domestic terrorism threat within the United States and beyond. This theme is also surprisingly relevant in this book and the wider discussion about the involvement of the wife of a US Supreme Court Justice in the infamous ‘Stop the Steal’ movement which led up to the day of mob’s storming of the US Capitol.

Although I have not yet read the entirety of my copy of the January 6th Committee’s new report which has just become available to the public in its entirety, I can only imagine that The Breach is as an indispensable accompanying document which should be read by anyone who is serious about studying and understanding just exactly what led to the attack on our Constitutional and democratic election process. I have watched the entirety of all of the January 6th Committee’s public hearings, and The Breach helps fill in some of the gaps of the larger story quite impressively. The picture is still not complete, as there is still obviously much investigating to do on the part of the US Justice Department and the historians who will no doubt be pouring over the facts for generations to come; but Riggleman’s book should be considered an important and revealing piece of the vast puzzle leading us to a more accurate and comprehensive picture. You don’t want to skip this read, as Riggleman has provided a short but meaty account of one of the darkest events in American history.