Jan. 6 Committee Adviser Confesses Ahead of Dems' Primetime Hearing: 'No Smoking Gun' Trump Planned Capitol Riots

"I don't know if the baseline's going to be just about the criminal activity... I think it's going to be about the belief systems that we have to combat in the future."

A former Senior Technical Adviser to the House Democrats' partisan Jan. 6 committee has some bad news for CNN audience members expecting its hearings will lead to Donald Trump's arrest. Watch:

The former top adviser admitted ahead of Thursday's 'blockbuster' primetime hearings there was no 'smoking gun' that Donald Trump planned the Capitol Riot. In fact, Riggleman confessed there was no direct evidence showing the riot was a premeditated attack.

"I think there's, there's certainly evidence of communications that led to certain types of activities that could lead to what I call 'coup-like movements'," Riggleman said.

The former Congressman didn't explain how unarmed rioters could topple the U.S. government and force the installation of Donald Trump as president.

"And you know, that's the thing that the committee and the challenge that the committee has right now is how do you put all of this data and all these interviews together to present a story?" he continued. "The biggest challenge we have... is how do we compete with a story of fantasy? How do we compete with that compelling sort of fantastical apocalyptic conspiracy theory that we have to take over the government or there's a deep state or globalists or a Q-Anon?"

"Facts are boring," he added. "And I think the thing that we have to do is we have to be able to present those facts in a compelling way and to merge that data with the amazing amount of interviews and the expertise of each of the committee's investigative teams."

The former Jan. 6 committee adviser essentially admitted that the hearings aren't about discovering new facts, but about fighting an 'ideology' that partisan Democrats don't like.

"I don't know if the baseline's going to be just about the criminal activity," Riggleman went on. "I think it's going to be about the belief systems that we have to combat in the future."

"The belief systems that we have to combat in the future." This is not the federal government's job. The U.S. Constitution allows for American's freedom of conscience and free speech. Constitutional law is about regulating citizens' activity, not the content of their speech or belief system.

“That probably [was] going to be very difficult to even find based on the limited authorities of Congress as far as getting data and things like that,” Riggleman conceded.

The former Jan. 6 committee adviser then said there is evidence that Donald Trump 'knew what was going on.'

“I think when you look at the totality of the evidence — and some of these are my personal opinions — it is pretty apparent that at some points, President Trump knew what was going on,” Riggleman said.

“If you look at what’s happening and the message that’s being pushed by President Trump himself on social media … you start to see this pipeline of information that’s very damaging,” he added.

So, Donald Trump communicated with advisers and 'knew what was going on' during the Capitol Riot. It is not clear why this necessitates a politicized, one-sided rehashing of the defeated impeachment trial in primetime on Thursday.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the debunked Russia collusion witch hunt against Donald Trump, weighed in on the coming primetime hearing.

“Our goal is to present the narrative of what happened in this country, how close we came to losing our democracy, what led to that violent attack,” Schiff told CBS’ 'Face the Nation' on Sunday. “But perhaps most important is the public hasn’t seen it woven together, how one thing led to another, how one line of effort to overturn the election led to another and ultimately led to terrible violence, the first nonpeaceful transfer of power in our history.”

Schiff, of course, is lying. After Donald Trump's election in 2016, which the Democrats formally contested in Congress, the U.S. Capitol exploded into violent riots at Trump's Inauguration.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to prove that Donald Trump had anything to do with planning the Capitol Riot, as earlier reported.  Indeed, uncovered texts provide further evidence that the former president is innocent of the Democrats' charges.

Interestingly, CNN's Brianna Keilar asked Riggleman if the committee had "proof of a conspiracy."

"Well, conspiracy's an interesting definition, right?" he responded. "That's just, you know, two people sort of doing something together in a specific line or a specific type of activity. So all of this, you know, if somebody's talking about how do we actually do a plan between the legislative branch, the executive branch, right in the judicial branch. And we have to actually influence all those branches to make something happen. You know, that that's a 'conspiracy of thought,' for sure."

A "conspiracy of thought." That is where the Democrats are now. If that's the threshold for formal hearings, then perhaps Congress should look into the "conspiracy of thought" among the anti-Trump "shadow cabal" that coordinated to stop him at all costs ahead of the 2020 election.