A6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022
BY ROSALIND S. HELDERMANOn Jan. 6, 2021, around the
time that thousands of Donald
Trump’s supporters swarmed the
U.S. Capitol, a top Trump appoin-
tee at the U.S. State Department
met with two activists who had
been key to spreading the false
narrative that the presidential
election had been stolen.
The meeting came as Trump’s
allies were pressing theories that
election machines had been
hacked by foreign powers and
were angling for Trump to em-
ploy the vast powers of the
national security establishment
to seize voting machines or even
rerun the election.
Robert A. Destro, a law profes-
sor at Catholic University of
America then serving as an assis-
tant secretary of state, confirmed
to The Washington Post he met
with the two men — Colorado
podcaster Joe Oltmann and
Michigan lawyer Matthew DeP-
erno — in the midst of the
tumultuous day.
The two men have previously
claimed to have huddled on
Jan. 6 with State Department
leaders, who Oltmann has said
were sympathetic to the claims
that a “coup” was underway to
steal the presidency from Trump.
They have not identified with
whom they met. Destro’s ac-
knowledgment is the first inde-
pendent confirmation that they
successfully gained the high-lev-
el audience. It is unclear whether
the meeting led to any action.
Oltmann and DePerno played
important behind-the-scenes
roles in crafting the baseless
allegations that the election was
stolen from Trump, a review of
emails and public statements
from Trump allies shows. The
State Department meeting pro-
vides new evidence of the success
that activists spreading false
claims about the election had in
gaining access to top administra-
tion officials. Trump chief of staff
Mark Meadows was in close
contact with activists pushing
false fraud narratives, as were
high-level officials at the Justice
Department and the Department
of Homeland Security.
Little is known about the ori-
gins of the session at the State
Department. The department is
responsible for international di-
plomacy, and former officials
said meetings that revolve
around domestic elections would
be highly unusual.
In response to questions from
The Post, Destro confirmed in an
email that he met with Oltmann
and DePerno, now the Republi-
can nominee for attorney general
in Michigan. But Destro declined
to answer other questions, in-
cluding what was discussed that
day, whether other officials took
part and whether anyone took
action as a result.
“I met with hundreds of Amer-
ican citizens and foreign nation-
als during my time at State, all of
whom had foreign-focused is-
sues to discuss,” wrote Destro,
who served as the assistant sec-
retary of state for democracy,
human rights, and labor from
September 2019 to the end of
Trump’s term. “I won’t talk about
any of the details of those meet-
ings, either.”
Before joining the State De-
partment, Destro was a law pro-
fessor who specialized in reli-
gious liberty and had served as
an adviser to religious organiza-
tions. He has appeared on a
podcast hosted by Tony Perkins,
president of the socially con-
servative Family Research Coun-
cil.
Oltmann and DePerno did not
respond to questions about the
meeting.
As part of his candidacy to
become Michigan’s top law en-
forcement officer, DePerno de-
scribed the meeting on a ques-
tionnaire from a pro-Trump in-
terest group. “On January 6,
2021, I was in the State Depart-
ment briefing Mike Pompeo’s
staff on how the election was
stolen,” DePerno wrote. He add-
ed in parentheses: “NOTE to
reader: don’t tell the Feds!”
In various podcasts and on
social media, Oltmann has also
described the meeting, suggest-
ing he had a series of high-level
meetings with officials at theState Department and asserting
that they were impressed by
information he presented that he
claimed proved the election was
stolen. He has been coy about
naming the officials.
“I was actually in the State
Department meeting with lead-
ership,” he said in one podcast
appearance on Jan. 11, 2021. He
said he had not “been cleared” to
name the officials with whom he
met but added: “I met with
leadership at every level. Every
level. Bar none.”
Oltmann also described being
taken to a secure area of the
building that was “cherry wood
lined” with “pictures of past
presidents and people who have
served.” The description appears
to match the area of the State
Department’s seventh floor
known as Mahogany Row, where
the offices of the secretary and
his top aides are located. The
assistant secretary position then
held by Destro does not typically
have an office on Mahogany Row.
In a social media post, Olt-
mann wrote that he had met
with “the right people” at theState Department, and, in an-
other podcast appearance, he
described how department offi-
cials reacted with shock to the
information he shared.
“They said, ‘If this is true, this
is a coup,’ ” Oltmann recounted.
“I said, ‘Well, that’s exactly, that’s
what I would call it.’ ”
A spokesman for then-Secre-
tary of State Mike Pompeo de-
clined to comment about the
meeting, including whether the
secretary attended the session or
had been aware of it. Pompeo’s
public schedule indicates that he
was attending meetings in Wash-
ington that day.
A Trump loyalist, Pompeo ex-
pressed sympathy for the then-
president’s refusal to concede
the election before Jan. 6. Asked
by reporters a week after the
election whether the department
was engaging in a “smooth tran-
sition” to Joe Biden’s administra-
tion, Pompeo responded that
there would be “a smooth transi-
tion to a second Trump adminis-
tration, all right” — a remark
that some of his aides later
characterized as a joke.
But Pompeo was also one of
the first Trump Cabinet mem-
bers to forcefully denounce the
Jan. 6 attack, tweeting at 6:
that evening that the storming of
the Capitol had been “unaccept-
able.”
The House committee investi-
gating the Jan. 6 attack has
expressed interest in the origin
and weaponization of false
claims that elections machines
were hacked.
Trump’s outside supporters
sought out potential allies across
the government, including offi-
cials whose normal portfolios
did not include elections. At the
Justice Department, for in-
stance, Trump allies worked
closely with a mid-level official
named Jeffrey Bossert Clark who
was otherwise responsible for
environmental civil litigation.
Clark has said his communica-
tions were lawful.
The State Department’s desig-
nated point person on a White
House deputies group that dealt
with the possibility of foreign
interference in the 2020 election
was then-Deputy Secretary of
State Steve Biegun.
In an interview, Biegun said
that by Jan. 6, top government
officials were convinced that the-
ories such as those circulated by
Oltmann and DePerno that held
that foreign forces had hacked
voting machines were “just com-
plete and utter nonsense.”
“The information that has
been at least disclosed by advo-
cates of this theory has absolute-
ly zero correlation with anything
that was available to senior gov-
ernment officials, who had ac-
cess to every bit of information
within the United States govern-
ment,” Biegun said.
Biegun said that, because of
the coronavirus pandemic and
street closures in Washington as
a result of the events at the
Capitol, he was one of the few
employees working at the State
Department on Jan. 6. He said he
was not aware of Oltmann and
DePerno’s meeting.
Virginia Bennett, a former ca-
reer Foreign Service officer who
was Destro’s predecessor as act-
ing assistant secretary at the
start of the Trump administra-
tion, said the job generally in-
volves meeting with foreigners,
as well as American activists
involved in human rights advo-
cacy overseas. But, she said, it
would be atypical for the assis-
tant secretary to hold meetings
about U.S. elections.
“I cannot understand why
anyone who was examining U.S.
election practices and who was
not foreign would have had a
meeting at the State Depart-
ment,” she said. “The Depart-ment of State has no authority
from statute or other mandate
over U.S. elections. Period. End
of sentence.
“I don’t understand how any-
body could have thought that
was a good idea,” she added.
The department previously
faced scrutiny when two State
Department officials in the
Obama administration met with
former British spy Christopher
Steele in October 2016 to discuss
his opposition research alleging
ties between Trump’s campaign
and Russia. Steele’s work came
on behalf of a subcontractor for
the Clinton campaign, and his
claims were ultimately not sub-
stantiated.
In that case, the Justice De-
partment inspector general later
found that one of the State
Department officials quickly de-
tailed the meeting to the depart-
ment’s liaison to the FBI, which
has responsibility for investigat-
ing foreign interference in elec-
tions, including flagging a piece
of information provided by
Steele that she knew to be incor-
rect.
How Oltmann and DePerno
reached Destro is not clear. But
the path the two men took to the
inner sanctum of the State De-
partment provides insight into
how Trump’s desperate desire for
evidence to prop up his false
claims helped elevate previously
unknown characters into nation-
al prominence when they assert-
ed evidence of a stolen election.
A Kalamazoo-area attorney,
DePerno had run once unsuc-
cessfully for local office when he
filed a lawsuit in November 2020
that argued a quickly corrected
election night tabulation error in
Michigan’s Antrim County pro-
vided evidence of a vast con-
spiracy to hack voting machines
made by the company Dominion
Voting Systems.
In December 2020, a judge
agreed to give DePerno’s team
access to voting machines for
review. They produced a report
that argued the machines
showed signs of manipulation.
Experts quickly denounced the
report as riddled with errors — a
finding later confirmed by a
Republican-led state legislative
committee in Michigan, and De-
Perno’s lawsuit was dismissed.
But as Jan. 6 approached, Trump,
his attorney Rudy Giuliani and
others used the document to
argue the election was rigged.
Oltmann was a businessman
and activist little known outside
of Colorado when he stepped
forward on his daily podcast
with a wild claim days after the
election. He alleged that weeks
earlier, he had infiltrated a secret
meeting of “antifa journalists”
and overheard a man identify
himself as Eric “the Dominion
guy” and then tell the others:
“Don’t worry about the election.
Trump is not going to win. I
made f---ing sure of that.”
Oltmann went on to name a
Dominion employee who he al-
leged had made the promise to
rig the election: Director of Strat-
egy and Security Eric Coomer.
Oltmann then circulated anti-
Trump writings Coomer had
posted to his friends on Face-
book. Coomer has denied taking
part in a call like the one Olt-
mann described or promising
that Trump would not win the
election. In December 2020,
Coomer filed a defamation law-
suit against Oltmann in Colora-
do. A judge has fined Oltmann
for refusing to name the person
he claims gave him access to the
meeting. Earlier this month, Col-
orado District Court Judge Marie
Avery Moses declined to dismiss
the case, ruling that Coomer has
a reasonable likelihood of pre-
vailing.
In the heated weeks after the
election, Trump supportersseized on Oltmann’s story of a
supposed high-level Dominion
official who had pledged to
swing the election, and Olt-
mann’s profile quickly rose. He
appeared on numerous pro-
Trump national media programs
and filed a sworn statement in
lawsuits to overturn the election
that were spearheaded by the
lawyer Sidney Powell, a Trump
ally. Oltmann’s claim was also
cited by Powell and Giuliani
during a joint news conference at
the headquarters of the Republi-
can National Committee in No-
vember 2020.
Oltmann was also a featured
speaker at a rally at Washington’s
Freedom Plaza on the evening of
Jan. 5. During his speech, he
presented a chart that he
claimed proved Dominion ma-
chines had been hacked and
concluded, “God will protect us,
and God will make sure that
President Trump is in office for
another four years.”
Social media posts and emails
produced in the litigation show
that Oltmann and DePerno had
joined forces by the morning of
Jan. 6 and were working to
spread their information to oth-
er Trump loyalists and, ultimate-
ly, to the president himself.
“I am publishing the Domin-
ion audit raw data from Antrim
County machines... Sitting with
Matt DePerno and his informa-
tion overlays this diagram...
perfectly,” Oltmann wrote in an
email at 7:46 that morning to
several people, including a re-
porter for the pro-Trump outlet
Newsmax.
At 9:11 a.m., an Oltmann em-
ployee tweeted, “We are in DC
and can explain exactly how
Dominion fixes it. No one will
pass the truth up to @POTUS Joe
Oltmann and Matt DePerno can
explain it all perfectly. We are in
Trump Hotel. Bob Destro won’t
give us an audience with anyone.
Whats going on?” He added:
“#WWG1WWA,” a variation on a
hashtag standing for “Where We
Go One We Go All,” the motto of
adherents of the QAnon extrem-
ist ideology.
At some point after the tweet,
Destro met with the two men, he
told The Post.
Destro, who was confirmed to
his job in 2019, was in charge of
the bureau that produces an
annual report on the state of
human rights around the world.
He was also named a special
representative for Tibetan is-
sues, a role in which he was
critical of the Chinese govern-
ment.
From 2004 to 2006, Destro
had also served as a special
counsel on election issues to the
Republican secretary of state of
Ohio, Ken Blackwell. But De-
stro’s State Department role had
no responsibilities for U.S. elec-
tions.
In a post on Parler, a social
media platform then popular
with Trump supporters, Olt-
mann wrote on Jan. 6 that he had
met with the “right people” at the
State Department.
“They get it, and then this was
shared with me there,” he wrote.
Attached was a photo of a
document signed by retired Air
Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McIn-
erney, in which McInerney
claimed he had evidence that
results from the Georgia Senate
runoff elections on Jan. 5 had
been manipulated by China to
allow Democrats to win. “This is
100% true. Share,” Oltmann
wrote.
A Trump supporter and asso-
ciate of former national security
adviser Michael Flynn, McIner-
ney had endorsed some of the
most fantastical claims about the
2020 election in the weeks before
Jan. 6. He said that U.S. Special
Forces had violently seized com-
puter servers in Germany where
the CIA had been holding elec-
tion data. And he had called on
Trump to declare martial law, set
up military tribunals, prevent
the electoral college from meet-
ing to confirm Biden’s victory
and cancel the Inauguration.
While in Washington that
week, Oltmann has said he had a
series of other high-level meet-
ings, including huddling with
Trump lawyers Giuliani and
John Eastman. Oltmann said in a
podcast appearance last year
that on the evening of Jan. 6 —
after the Capitol had been
stormed — he met with Giuliani
at the Trump legal team’s war
room at the Willard hotel. Giu-
liani remained interested in his
information about the stolen
election, Oltmann said.
“I was like, ‘Look, just put me
in front of President Trump and
I’ll walk through it,’ ” Oltmann
recounted.
Other Trump aides inter-
vened, Oltmann said, and a
meeting planned for Jan. 7 with
Trump never took place.John Hudson, Jacqueline Alemany
and Alice Crites contributed to this
report.A top State Dept. o∞cial met with election deniers Jan. 6
SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
Attorney Matthew DePerno, seen speaking at the Michigan Capitol in October 2021, and another
pro-Trump activist met with then-Assistant Secretary of State Robert A. Destro on Jan. 6, 2021.Two activists huddled
with Robert A. Destro,
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