The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has hired former Virginia congressman Denver Riggleman as a senior staff member, adding another Republican to its ranks even as most GOP lawmakers attack the committee as being too partisan.

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       Riggleman, who represented Virginia’s 5th Congressional District for two years, said Friday that he had accepted the position of “senior technical adviser” on the committee and that he felt his background — as a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who has also studied the spread of online extremism — lent itself to the task of investigating “the terrible happenings on that day.” Protesting the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win, a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6 overran the Capitol in a violent siege that left five people dead.

       “Doing this might be one of the biggest things I’ve ever done in my life,” Riggleman said in a video posted Friday night to Twitter. “We can’t worry about the color of the jerseys anymore or whether we have an R or a D next to our name. It’s time for us to look in a fact-based way at what happened on January 6 and to see if we can prevent this from ever happening again in the future.”

       Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) announced Friday night that, along with Riggleman, the committee had also tapped Joe Maher, a principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, to join the group. Maher was recommended for the committee by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and Thompson said both men would provide “invaluable insight and expertise” during the investigation.

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       “I thank these two public servants for their willingness to support the Select Committee’s important work by joining our nonpartisan staff,” Thompson said in a statement. “They understand how close our democracy was to catastrophe on January 6th and I commend their commitment to help ensure we never see a repeat of that day.”

       Riggleman has been an outspoken critic of former president Donald Trump, as well as the baseless claims he says are overtaking the Republican Party. Like the two GOP lawmakers who were already named to the Jan. 6 committee — Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — Riggleman has faced backlash from his own party for his denunciation of Trump.

       Tensions surrounding the Jan. 6 committee have escalated in recent weeks, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blocking two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s committee picks — Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) — from being appointed, and McCarthy (R-Calif.) in response pulling all five of his choices for the committee. McCarthy’s pushback led Cheney, who was ousted from her party’s leadership in the spring, to accuse him of attempting to block the investigation.

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       The Jan. 6 committee opened its investigation last month with visceral accounts of the Trump supporters’ assault on the police officers who defended the Capitol that day and who said that the trauma and horrific attacks they sustained months ago still plagued them. The committee is scheduled to reconvene after Labor Day, when the House returns from its August recess.

       Meagan Flynn contributed to this report.

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