Donald Trump loves a good conspiracy theory so how's this one for size?
I reckon his White House staff were in cahoots with the organisers of the march that led to the Washington riots. Because if they weren't involved how come one group of Trump extremists were able to send an invite to an email address that only the White House knew.
Let me explain. Several months ago a friend and I sent a tongue-in-cheek email to the White House to see if we could interest President Trump in buying a painting of his Scottish ancestral home.
National Guard troops inside the Capitol Visitor’s Centre (J Scott Applewhite/AP)
The artwork of the house in which his mother Mary Anne MacLeod was born on the Isle of Lewis came into our possession a few years ago.
We got it for a pittance and wondered if the president might make us an offer for it.
We didn't think he would, of course, but unexpectedly the White House acknowledged receipt of our email from a rarely used account of ours - but that was the last we heard from them.
Then lo and behold earlier this month an email from a group of Trump supporters dropped into the same email address that we had supplied to the White House, leaving us to wonder how they could have got it if it hadn't come from Trump's people. The email urged us to "act now" to support the "strong" MAGA march in Washington on January 6 and sang the praises of Trump and said: "It's not over until President Trump says it's over."
It also outlined a number of ways that money could be donated to the Trump campaign.
There were links to a whole range of Trump merchandising possibilities like T-shirts backing Trump for the 2024 presidential election, a dreadful prospect which is hopefully fading with every passing day and his impeachment trial on the horizon.
Not surprisingly I won't be buying any of the Trump garbage but if the DUP's Ian Paisley - who said his buddy wasn't responsible for provoking the Capitol chaos - wants an address all he has to do is ask.
And staying on the subject of the attempted coup, I'm glad to see the worldwide praise for Mark Davey (above), the Belfast man who filmed most of the astonishing pictures of the storming of the Capitol after he and ITV correspondent Robert Moore became one of the few news teams to gain access to the building. Mark's an old mucker who used to bring me my tea and sausage sodas of a morning in Belfast.
For Mark, who's from the east of the city, started his broadcasting career as a runner in the UTV newsroom in the 80s. And one of his duties, that he fulfilled admirably, was to get hungry newshounds like me our morning sustenance from the Havelock House canteen if we were too busy to go ourselves.
Mark, however, wasn't destined to be a tea boy for the rest of his life. He was always mustard keen to learn about the job of news gathering and it was no surprise when he was appointed as an editor in UTV cutting the pictures of the day together.
One of his first jobs was to edit a nine-minute package with me on the Kegworth air disaster in January 1989.
I'd arrived back in UTV late in the afternoon the day after the crash with tapes of pictures from the scene and interviews with survivors and relatives.
I'm not sure whether Mark or I panicked more about the task in hand but somehow we got my report on air with seconds to spare. Mark never looked back and his skills as a camera operator as well as an editor landed him a job in London with ITN in 1990.
He's worked the world ever since, spending time in the ITN offices in China and the Middle East. In interviews about his time back home, Mark remembered getting me my tea and Ulster Says No rallies in Belfast.
One of the images he recalled in particular was the classic shot that another cameraman working alongside me recorded of former DUP man Denny Vitty struggling with a policeman in a flower pot outside the City Hall during a protest about a visit by Secretary of State Tom King in 1985.
Incidentally, I should just add that one of Mark Davey's predecessors as a newsroom runner in UTV was Eugene Campbell who's also gone on to establish himself as one of the finest camera operators in the world.
'Big Huge', with whom I had a great catch-up last year over lunch in Strangford, shot to public attention down the years after he worked closely with the royal family including Prince Willliam. Eugene also won a fistful of awards for his coverage of wars around the world.
Mark Davey should be preparing his acceptance speeches now too.
