More than two years on, the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot only get weirder. I’m referring in particular to the never satisfactorily explained peculiarities around whatever law enforcement was doing that day, a full accounting of which has been blocked by those in power from the very start.

The latest news on this front comes from government ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which received a public records request for Secret Service communications that reveal the agency’s disturbing closeness with the right-wing antigovernment militia Oath Keepers and its founder and leader, the recently convicted Stewart Rhodes. The Oath Keepers are not only one of the most prominent extremist groups associated with the Capitol riot — to the point where more than a dozen members wound up being convicted for their involvement — but they were specifically profiled by the Secret Service’s threat assessment division afterwards.

Yet the emails obtained by CREW suggest that the Secret Service had a friendly, even strangely intimate, relationship with Rhodes and the Oath Keepers. In the most eyepopping email, dated September 2020, a Secret Service agent refers to himself as “the unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official)” and informs his fellow agents, after speaking with Rhodes over the phone, that the group wants to “provide protection and medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attack by leftist groups” and that they’d “have security details” at a Fayetteville Trump rally, for which he “wanted to liaison with our personnel.” The agent helpfully provides Rhodes’s cell number.