KEILAR: “A few brave Republicans have defended the election results and congratulated President-Elect Joe Biden on his win. And at least one Republican congressman is unloading on the President and his GOP enablers, saying that he’s, quote, sick of it. He’s joining us now to talk about this. Denver Riggleman is a Republican congressman from Virginia. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us and talking to us about this. I do want to tell our viewers you’re a former Air Force Intel officer and a contractor for the NSA. The President took his conspiracy theories to a new level this weekend, he claimed actually that the FBI and the Justice Department may have helped rig the election against him. Of course, there’s no evidence of that. What is your reaction to that, and also the fact that there are aren’t many Republicans like you who are calling this what it is?”
RIGGLEMAN: “I worked, as you know — I was in NSA, and thank you for talking about that. But I worked at a lot of these agencies where we did counter-terrorism mission management. And when you have that many people who are disparaged by things that just aren’t true, it really got under my skin. You know, I’ve been trying to actually lower the temperature here a little bit today because when I hear things like that, it does upset me in a way because of the people that I served with, the oaths that we took to the Constitution, and a fact that a lot of these conspiracy theories are really just hogwash. And, you know, in doing that, I don’t know if you know this, Brianna, I’m now on the board of the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), and I’m the co-author on something that just uses data and statistics that talks about the danger of conspiracy theories. I will read this, and the working title is ‘How Disinformation Networks and Conspiracies Subvert Our Democracy and National Security.’ And what we wanted to do is use data analytics to disprove a lot of these conspiracy theories. So that’s where I’m going next, Brianna, is I’m trying to use my background in intelligence, whether it was a CEO of a company that supported DOD technologies, doing cyber and non-kinetic types of attack options, but also my background in Air Force intelligence and trying to get ahead of this using data and analytics, you know, rather than some of the hyperbolic stuff that you’re hearing about right now.”
KEILAR: “Yeah, that’s a very worthy goal, it’s obviously so needed as we hear people wondering what to believe and certainly their faith in institutions and information is being undermined. I do want to ask you, though, your party, at least elected officials — I mean, you’re a rarity as someone who’s speaking out. You lost your primary to a conservative challenger, but you are — you’re a rarity. It seems like Republicans either — look, I know a lot of them, they don’t believe this stuff, but they seem very worried about coming out and saying that it is what it is, that it’s not true. So I wonder, do you still consider yourself a Republican?”
RIGGLEMAN: “I don’t think — as far as defining myself as a constitutional Republican, I do, but as far as the state and the GOP, especially in Virginia, it’s very difficult to. And, Brianna, you know the problem with this, is that we get caught up in tribes and we’re so afraid to go away from the team. Right now I’m tribeless. You know, I sort of left that — some of the bizarre conspiracy theory actions because I know they’re untrue or they’re improbable. You know, nothing is impossible in intelligence world, but it’s improbable. And I’ve refused to join another tribe. I think that’s part of the great thing of being an American. And some of those that I know that haven’t spoken up are incredible people. I think they’re a little bit worried about their jobs, votes, the base, but I have this freedom. You know why I’m here. To be the first Republican to officiate a same-sex wedding, things like that, is why I got thrown out in a church parking lot, it wasn’t even a primary. And I think that’s just how I’m wired, is to be outspoken. I’m not a politician. I’ve been in politics all of three years. And I just — I love to serve. You know, I was military, I was intelligence, I got to be a congressman, my goodness. But if I can’t sit here and spit facts for people, if I’m so afraid of my own shadow or being part of a tribe that I don’t have the ability to say what I feel, I really don’t deserve to be sitting in this seat. And that’s how I feel about it. I don’t know if it’s in everybody else’s hearts, I just know for me, my own — you know, I’ve had my own friends and people close to me that have said some awful things. That’s why I’m trying to sort of shut the heat down a little bit and come at this more from a data and analytic way because I see the pain that it’s causing with this type of misinformation and it really is hurting the fabric of our democracy if we don’t say something about it.”
KEILAR: “So what do you say to Mitch McConnell, someone who’s in a position of power in this current situation where information is being — or disinformation is huge?”
RIGGLEMAN: “It seems in politics there’s always a compromise on language, and I learned that. I think for senator McConnell, I think it’s this. We’ll have a new president in, what, 50 days or so, Brianna? And with that new president, we’ve got to make sure that our foundations and the transition of this democracy is what we have done in the past. And we can have arguments about maybe specific cases of voters fraud, but you can’t come out and say — listen, the fact we’re talking about systemic fraud from the FBI, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, Venezuelan actors, we’re talking about Sharpie-gate, watermarks and white vans driving up at night and dumping ballots, you can say that a lot of this stuff is not correct. We’re going to have a new president. We can look at this, one or another, if they’re small cases, but right now we need to move on with the transition of government and we need to realize what this is. We’re having a new president. I don’t know what the difficulty of that is, Brianna, to say that. I guess I’m having a tough time with that because it just seems like this is what we do as Americans. It doesn’t seem that’s that big of a stretch, to have a peaceful transition where we’re looking at things based on fact and not on things that are really fantasy.”
KEILAR: “Congressman Riggleman, I want to thank you for coming on. Good luck in your next endeavor.”
(h/t Mediaite)