Robert Destro

Robert A. Destro is an American attorney, academic, and government official who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from September 2019 to January 2021. In October 2020, he also became the United States Special Coordinator on Tibetan Issues. He previously served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1983 to 1989 and as a professor of law at The Catholic University of America. He also wrote a letter in mid-2011 to Ali Khamenei on the request of Douglas Coe, which was delivered to the Iranian ambassador in Paris. He cited the fact that half a million Tibetans had entered forced labour as a violation of human rights.

Destro confirmed to the Washington Post that, during the 2021 United States Capitol attack, he met in the State Department with "Big Lie" supporters Joe Oltmann, a Colorado podcaster, and Matthew DePerno, lawyer and candidate in the 2022 Michigan Attorney General election. While Destro declined to disclose the substance of the meeting, Oltmann posted on social media that he had met with "the right people" in the State Department and that "they said, 'If this [the false claims of irregularities in the 2020 US Presidential election ] is true, this is a coup.'"