The Democrat-led House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol failed to properly archive records, including documents, video of depositions and correspondence with the Biden administration, said a Republican lawmaker probing the panel’s work.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chair of the GOP’s investigation into the House Jan. 6 Select Committee, wrote in a series of letters obtained by The Washington Times that the previous panel did not follow the law or House rules in preserving and turning over all of the data and documents related to the panel’s investigation by the end of the congressional term last December.
In a letter to Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the former chair of the Jan. 6 panel, Mr. Loudermilk said that all committee chairs have a responsibility to archive “noncurrent records” at the end of a Congress.
He added that the Democrat-led panel had more stringent requirements to turn over all records to any committee designated by the speaker, which would include the panel that Mr. Loudermilk leads.
Mr. Loudermilk said that he was concerned that some of the records were not archived and that video recordings of depositions were not included.
“The fact that we’ve discovered a number of missing documents and videos from Rep. Bennie Thompson’s investigation into January 6 begs the question, what else is he hiding? We are going to follow the facts and leave no stone unturned,” Mr. Loudermilk, Georgia Republican, told The Washington Times.
The Washington Times reached out to Mr. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat, for comment.
Former President Donald Trump weighed in Wednesday on Mr. Loudermilk’s charges against Mr. Thompson on his social media platform Truth Social.
“THE JANUARY 6 UNSELECT COMMITTEE EXTINGUISHED AND DESTROYED ALL ’EVIDENCE’ & RECORDS,” Mr. Trump said. “CRIMINALS!”
Mr. Thompson disputed Mr. Loudermilk’s letter in a correspondence with the Republican lawmaker, saying that Mr. Loudermilk’s letter had “significant factual errors.”
Mr. Thompson added that the committee worked to archive over 1 million records, and provided over 4 terabytes of data.
A footnote in Mr. Thompson’s letter said that the panel “was not obligated to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions,” and instead provided written transcripts of the depositions and interviews as the official records.
Mr. Loudermilk also took issue with a pair of letters Mr. Thompson sent to White House special counsel Richard Stauber that discussed an agreement between Mr. Thompson’s panel and the White House to interview personnel whose names were later redacted, and to then give the transcripts of those interviews to an unknown person.
Mr. Loudermilk addressed another letter from Mr. Thompson to Department of Homeland Security General Counsel Jonathan Myer, in which the Democratic lawmaker said that the panel would withhold portions of transcripts of interviews with members of the Secret Service that revealed private details of the witnesses. Those transcripts were sent to the DHS for review.
“No version of the letter to Mr. Sauber — either redacted or unredacted — or the letter to the DHS General Counsel was archived by the Select Committee or provided to this Committee,” Mr. Loudermilk said in his letter. “Additionally, there is no explanation of what transcripts these letters are referring to or why you — in coordination with then-Speaker Pelosi — did not immediately archive the records with the Clerk.”
Mr. Thompson said that the panel wrote to the White House and DHS to get “assistance and guidance” on how to properly archive the transcripts to protect “witnesses’ safety, national security, and to safeguard law enforcement operations.”
The White House was still reviewing the material when the committee dissolved at the end of last year, Mr. Thompson said, which meant that the panel did not “have the opportunity to properly archive that material with the rest of its records.”
The GOP lawmaker also charged the panel with not providing evidence that it investigated security failures on Jan. 6.
Mr. Loudermilk told Fox News, which first reported on the letters, that when his staff began parsing through documents from the panel, they could not find “anything much at all” from Blue Team, a group of lawmakers on the panel tasked with investigating security issues at the Capitol on the day of the attacks.
“We’ve got lots of depositions, we’ve got lots of subpoenas, we’ve got video and other documents provided through subpoenas by individuals,” Mr. Loudermilk told Fox News. “But we’re not seeing anything from the Blue Team as far as reports on the investigation they did looking into the actual breach itself.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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