Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, who was chairman of the now-defunct House Jan. 6 committee, won’t say what happened to full transcripts and video of the committee’s depositions that GOP investigators now seek.
When asked by The Washington Times if the Jan. 6 committee gave the investigators the full video depositions, not select clips, he responded: “Everything we used in our proceedings, we filed consistently with what the law says.”
Mr. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat, drew a distinction between the unedited video recordings and the snippets used for presentations at the Jan. 6 committee’s carefully choreographed hearings.
“The law requires us that whatever product that we use, we archive that and that’s what we did,” he said of the House Administration Committee’s request for the unedited videos. “Everything that we used as a committee product, we shared.”
The Times pressed Mr. Thompson about what happened to the unedited video of the depositions that were not shown at the hearings.
“I have no idea,” Mr Thompson said. “We’re not required to keep certain materials.”
Did the Jan. 6 committee, which is now being investigated by the Administration Committee, destroy documents or other material?
“I’m not aware of the destruction of any documents,” Mr. Thompson said. “I’m not aware of staff being instructed to destroy any documents.”
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the Administration Committee’s oversight panel, said in a letter Wednesday to Mr. Thompson that voters deserve to see more than the cherry-picked video clips shown at the hearings.
“By failing to preserve these videos, you deny the American public the right to review the footage and make their own conclusions about witnesses’ truthfulness,” wrote Mr. Loudermilk, Georgia Republican.
The House Office of the Clerk’s rules and organization manual spells out the requirements for preserving committee records:
“A committee record is any document, regardless of format, that committee, subcommittee, and select committee members and staff create, receive, or maintain. All members and persons employed by the committee — on either the majority or minority — can generate a committee record.”
The Office of the Clerk has several categories of records that a committee typically generates and should keep permanently and transfer to the Office of Art and Archives at the end of a Congress. This includes “special media” such as audio recordings of testimonies and interviews, photographs of events, including those posted to social media and videos of events such as testimonies and interviews.
Video recordings of committee hearings are directly transferred from the House Recording Studio to the National Archives. The committee does not need to send those files to the Office of Art and Archives.
The manual states: “Members and staff should be aware that original committee records are the property of the committee and are, therefore, official records of the House of Representatives. As such, committee records should be maintained separately from the records of a Member’s personal office.”
House Republicans also launched an inquiry into whether the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol handed over documents and materials to Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, who charged former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates with trying to overturn 2020 election results in the state.
Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, and Mr. Loudermilk called on Ms. Willis and Mr. Thompson to turn over documents related to coordination between the Georgia prosecutor’s office and the committee.
The inquiry stems from a Dec. 17, 2021, letter Ms. Willis sent to Mr. Thompson requesting access to committee records to aid her investigation of Mr. Trump.
She specifically requested access to “recordings and transcripts of witness interviews and depositions, electronic and print records of communications, and records of travel.”
Mr. Thompson disputed that the committee shared records with Ms. Willis despite reports to the contrary in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We did not share any records,” he said. “That is incorrect.”
The Times contacted Ms. Willis’ office for comment but did not hear back.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.