The events of January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate, particularly regarding how demonstrators gained access to the building. Competing narratives about who opened the Capitol’s doors continue to propagate, often irrespective of the reality.
However, the objective facts about various instances where doors were opened from the inside have been known for some time, with most of those responsible having been identified and charged with crimes by the Department of Justice.
But the details of one of those instances, the first to occur at the Senate Fire Doors at approximately 2:16 PM, less than four minutes after the initial violent breach, remained unknown to the public.
After nearly four years of asking questions and seeking answers, we now know who opened the Senate Fire Doors near the parliamentarian’s office: brothers Asher and Gil Daniels. We’ve also been able to track the large majority of their movement in and around the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
However, there are still questions about why they have not been publicly identified or charged by the FBI, and the lack of transparency or evident interest from the Department of Justice does not help clarify matters.
And what is now discovered about their identities, upbringing, network of associates, and current locations only deepens the mystery — a mystery further complicated by the noticeable absence of footage from the Senate Fire Door and other critical locations in the House Oversight Committee’s Rumble Archive.
Asher — A Brother with Purpose
Asher Daniels’ life is anything but that of a stereotypical Trump supporter.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he obtained two degrees: one in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures with a focus on Arabic, and another in Marketing, both from Indiana University Bloomington. He also studied abroad at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 2012 to 2013.
In an August 6, 2020 piece he wrote for the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), he described his “lifelong dream” of becoming an Israeli citizen and detailed his career which started with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) before transitioning to a role at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, where he was reportedly tasked with recruiting young engineers to Israel.
After serving as the Director of Development for the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) in Washington, D.C., Asher explained he had delayed his move to Israel for long enough and was planning to “depart Capitol Hill and immigrate to Israel with Nefesh B’Nefesh.”
His LinkedIn indicates he left his position at EMET in June 2020, and by February 2021, he had taken up the role of Assistant to the Director of the World Zionist Organization, where he presumably worked to “enhance the impact of Zionist ideology and activity in Jewish communities around the world.”
Asher’s LinkedIn profile further shows that he left that position in November 2021 to become a development associate at JNS, before leaving to work on his Master’s Thesis on the Abraham Accords.
In his most recent opinion piece published on September 23, 2024, by JNS, Asher mentions returning to Tel Aviv after spending a year in London. He also states that he “arrived in Israel as a citizen on Erev Rosh Hashanah 2020.” The article includes several criticisms of the Biden administration but, perhaps unsurprisingly, omits any mention of his presence in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, 2021.
Gil — The Lone Soldier
Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/sEvE5MYtuj7fy4ap/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Gil’s social media presence has been more active than his brother’s in recent years, yet like Asher, personal information about him remains somewhat scarce.
Public-facing posts on an alias Facebook profile show an abrupt transition from a boy who cherished his dog above all else in 2014 to becoming a full-fledged member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), with apparent involvement in recent military actions as recently as December 2023.
An IMDb page lists him as an actor from 2014 to 2016, known for roles in “The Hudson Tribes”, “Madam Secretary”, and “The River. My Brother, Me.”
On April 27, 2021, Gil appears in a video on the official Nefesh B’Nefesh Facebook page, where he explains that he had just arrived in Tel Aviv with plans to enlist in the Israeli army, urging fellow Jews to “come home.”
Just as he did in Washington, D.C. on January 6, it seems Gil has continued to follow his brother Asher’s lead with a move to Israel after their involvement in the Capitol riot.
A Network of Possibility
It’s not uncommon for individuals involved in or encouraging riotous behavior on January 6th to have connections with various intelligence agencies or elements of the American military-industrial complex.
However, it is unusual to find January 6th participants who have Facebook friends at The New York Times and various other less than conservative organizations. Even rarer is a January 6th participant whose friend, a former CIA analyst, wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times comparing QAnon followers to Islamic terrorists. Is it even surprising to learn that this friend, Brent Giannotta, lists on his Facebook that he is currently working for Harris/Walz for America?
Asher and Gil hail from a significantly different background than most Americans. They were raised in an affluent household in Stamford, Connecticut, received education at elite institutions, and spent many years preparing for life in Israel — all while under the watchful eye of an extremely well-connected list of individuals.
With their background in Arabic studies and acting, alongside associations with various Israeli non-governmental organizations, it’s not far-fetched to speculate that they might have been groomed for intelligence roles.
Moreover, the fact that they have managed to avoid arrest while abroad, with Asher continuing his studies at a prestigious university in London and Gil joining the IDF’s Lone Soldier Program, does little to dispel these suspicions.
In preparation for this story, we made attempts to contact Asher and Gil, along with multiple family members and associates, seeking explanations that might dispel any unnecessary conspiratorial thinking. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all but one childhood classmate has so-far ignored requests for comment or information.
DoJ Missing in Action
When I was charged by the DOJ in April 2021, I found it odd that they had excluded information about the parliamentary fire door being opened from the inside.
During my initial voluntary interview with FBI agents in January 2021, I mentioned this moment and explained how that was where I initially entered the Capitol.
As my case dragged on into 2022, and I eventually pleaded guilty to the class B misdemeanor of picketing and parading, I remained baffled as to why that entrance was not included in any DOJ filing in my case—neither in the statement of facts, nor in the discovery presented to me, nor even in the AUSA memorandum used against me at sentencing.
I even brought this up myself to Judge Hogan during my sentencing hearing, where the response was essentially a collective shrug.
Answers continued to elude me as another year passed, but a nagging question remained: Who were these two men who entered so quickly after the initial breach, made a beeline for the senate fire doors, opened them while encouraging the crowd to move in, and then quickly left as though that phase of their mission had been accomplished?
I continued to wonder why the DOJ seemed so disinterested in what I had told them for nearly two years.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was not alone in my frustration.
According to an associate of Sedition Hunters with whom I’ve developed a cordial relationship based on factual analysis of the day, the DOJ was provided with their identities in early 2022, but they have no solid answers as to why they’ve not been charged or faced extradition.
“We have identified hundreds of insiders; most won’t be arrested because it’s not a priority, especially right now.” they explained.
“Seems like it would be a priority to apprehend people who were the first to open a door from the inside, no?” I responded, to which their reply was even more troubling.
“I agree. Do with it what you want, because I don’t think they’ll be held accountable.”
So, it remains unclear why they haven’t been charged or publicly identified by federal authorities — or faced extradition for that matter. But when it comes to uncovering the unbiased truth of what happened on January 6th, 2021, for public scrutiny, the DOJ continues to be largely missing in action.
Congressional Failure and Lingering Mystery
While much of the public continues to believe that the Republican Congress released the entirety of the surveillance video from the U.S. Capitol, this is absolutely not the case.
As repeatedly pointed out by January 6th pro se defendant William Pope, Speaker Johnson has been anything but transparent. Hundreds of hours of crucial video evidence continue to be withheld from the public.
According to my “Sedition Hunter” source:
“They (Congress) have purposely left out chunks of video from January 6th…It’s obvious they don’t want it out before the election or something. It’s really fucking suspect.”
Among the missing videos is the footage from camera 689 on January 6th — the camera that would show what transpired around the Daniels brothers’ action of opening the Senate fire doors.
However, as any seasoned January 6th researcher will note, this is just the tip of a very large iceberg.
And although various unofficially published clips of surveillance footage were once available on the Wayback Machine, an open-source internet archive, a cyberattack on October 8, 2024, has rendered many of these files inaccessible, including the one showing the Daniels brothers opening the Senate fire doors.
Even as the Wayback Machine slowly begins to function again, the identity of whoever was responsible for the DDoS attack remains a mystery — just like the motives of the Daniels brothers on January 6th, the reasons why the DOJ seems so uninterested in them, and a multitude of other unanswered questions about intelligence agency activity (both foreign and domestic) on January 6, 2021.
***Publisher’s Note***
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