FARGO – A former congressman who served as a senior technical adviser to a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will be speaking at the North Dakota Democratic-NPL State Convention in Fargo on April 4-7. Democrats announced Denver Riggleman, who represented Virginia’s 5th District from 2019 to 2021 as a Republican, will be participating.

Also speaking will be Nebraska Democratic State Party Chair Jane Kleeb.

“Jane Kleeb and the Nebraska Democratic Party have set a phenomenal precedent for other rural state Democratic parties to follow. Through extensive and passionate grassroots organizing, the number of Democrats elected in Nebraska has grown from 500 in 2016 to over 900 now,” Democratic-NPL Chair Adam Goldwyn said.

Since December 2016, Kleeb has served in a volunteer capacity as chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, and serves on the executive committees of the Democratic National Committee and the Association of State Democratic Committees.

For her years of work in rural communities, Kleeb was named a Climate Breakthrough awardee in 2023, the highest honor in the climate change field. She is setting out to create a new project called Energy Builders that works with rural communities to change the economic model of large-scale clean energy projects.

Riggleman is currently CEO of Riggleman Information and Intelligence Group, supporting technology development in the domestic counter-terrorism space, and chief strategist for the Network Contagion Research Institute, where he supports predictive analysis and disinformation tracking.