The now-defunct House Select Committee on Jan. 6 destroyed more than 100 encrypted files from its 2021 investigation before Republicans took over the chamber, House investigators say.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the Georgia Republican leading the House Administration Committee’s oversight investigation, said his computer forensic investigators discovered 117 files deleted by the Jan. 6 committee.
He is demanding former leaders of the Jan. 6 committee hand over passwords to the encrypted files.
It’s the latest twist in a monthslong back-and-forth struggle between GOP investigators and the defunct Democratic-run committees’s former chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, about the whereabouts of video recordings of witness depositions, transcripts, and other missing records.
Mr. Loudermilk said there is ample evidence of missing records from the Jan. 6 committee investigation run by Mr. Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican Trump foe whom Wyoming voters rejected in the 2022 GOP primary.
“It’s obvious that they went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation. It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules,” Mr. Loudermilk said on Fox News.
In a letter to Mr. Thompson last week, Mr. Loudermilk said his computer forensic team was able to recover the 117 deleted digital records from hard drives archived by the Jan. 6 committee. One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived.
“Further, we found that most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote. “In order to access these files and ensure they are properly archived, I ask that you provide a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the select committee.”
The panel said Mr. Thompson has not complied with the request.
Mr. Loudermilk questioned what else was missing.
“You sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote last week to Mr. Thompson. “You also claimed that you turned over 4 terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the select committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3 terabytes of data.”
Mr. Thompson acknowledged in July that the Jan. 6 committee did not archive all its records as required by House rules.
He also said in a Dec. 13 letter to Mr. Loudermilk’s panel that the Jan. 6 committee “transmitted its evidence of potential crimes to prosecutors who are investigating former President Trump.”
Mr. Loudermilk said the missing documents include records of information shared with the Department of Justice and Fulton County District Attorney, as alluded to in the Jan. 6 committee’s final report.
Mr. Thompson previously denied that the select committee’s investigative matter was destroyed.
The Washington Times asked Mr. Thompson in December if the Jan. 6 committee had destroyed 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.”
“The law requires us that whatever product that we use, we archive that and that’s what we did. Everything that we used as a committee product, we shared,” he said, indicating that only edited material displayed at public hearings was archived.
Mr. Thompson, in a letter responding to Mr. Loudermilk, said the accusations were “false” and that the Jan. 6 committee closely followed House rules for archiving records.
He called Mr. Loudermilk’s accusations nothing more than a “futile effort to amplify conspiracy theories and attack the credibility of the Select Committee and outside prosecutors.”
The Times previously pressed Mr. Thompson about what happened to the unedited video of the depositions that were not shown at the Select Committee hearings.
“I have no idea,” Mr. Thompson said. “We’re not required to keep certain materials.”
Mr. Loudermilk also wrote letters last week to White House counsel Richard A. Sauber and Department of Homeland Security counsel Jonathan Meyer requesting “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of White House and DHS testimony to the Jan. 6 committee.
In his letter to Mr. Meyer, Mr. Loudermilk wrote that he failed to respond to his Aug. 8 letter requesting that he return records sent to him by the Jan.6 Select Committee.
“Based on records in our possession and public reporting, we know that numerous Secret Service employees were interviewed who were either with former President Trump or in proximity to former President Trump on Jan. 6, 2021,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote.
“It is extremely concerning House Democrats did not archive the transcripts of these testimonies as required by House rules, but instead hid them from House Republicans by sending them to your office.”
He added, “If you continue to refuse to return these records, I will have no other choice than to take steps to compel you to return these records.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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