House Republican costs J6 Committee didn’t protect information, withheld communication with WH

The Democrat-led House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol didn’t correctly archive information, together with paperwork, video of depositions and correspondence with the Biden administration, says 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 sequence of letters obtained by the Washington Times that the earlier panel didn’t comply with the regulation or House guidelines in preserving and turning over the entire knowledge and paperwork associated to the panel’s investigation by the tip of the congressional time period final December.

In a letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson, the previous chair of the Jan. 6 panel, Mr. Loudermilk mentioned that each one committee chairs have a duty to archive “noncurrent records” on the finish of a Congress.

He added that the Democrat-led panel had extra stringent necessities to show over all information to any committee designated by the speaker, which would come with the panel that Mr. Loudermilk leads.

Mr. Loudermilk mentioned that he was involved that among the information weren’t archived and that video recordings of depositions weren’t 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, instructed The Washington Times.

The Washington Times reached out to Mr. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat, for remark.

Former President Donald Trump weighed in on Mr. Loudermilk’s costs towards Mr. Thompson on his social media platform Truth Social.

“THE JANUARY 6 UNSELECT COMMITTEE EXTINGUISHED AND DESTROYED ALL “EVIDENCE” & RECORDS,” Mr. Trump mentioned. “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 labored to archive over 1 million information, and supplied over 4 terabytes of knowledge.

A footnote in Mr. Thompson’s letter mentioned that the panel “was not obligated to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions,” and as a substitute supplied written transcripts of the depositions and interviews because the official information.

Mr. Loudermilk additionally took problem with a pair of letters Mr. Thompson despatched to White House Special Counsel Richard Stauber that mentioned an settlement between Mr. Thompson’s panel and the White House to interview personnel whose names have been later redacted, and to then give the transcripts of these interviews to an unknown individual.

Mr. Loudermilk addressed one other letter from Mr. Thompson to Department of Homeland Security General Counsel Jonathan Myer, through which the Democratic lawmaker mentioned that the panel would withhold parts of transcripts of interviews with members of the Secret Service that exposed personal particulars of the witnesses. Those transcripts have been despatched to the DHS for evaluate.

“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 mentioned 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 mentioned that the panel wrote to the White House and DHS to get “assistance and guidance” on easy methods to correctly archive the transcripts to guard “witnesses’ safety, national security, and to safeguard law enforcement operations.”

The White House was nonetheless reviewing the fabric when the committee dissolved on the finish of final 12 months, Mr. Thompson mentioned, which meant that the panel didn’t “have the opportunity to properly archive that material with the rest of its records.”

The GOP lawmaker additionally charged the panel with not offering proof that it investigated safety failures on Jan. 6.

Mr. Loudermilk instructed Fox News, which first reported on the letters, that when his workers started parsing via paperwork from the panel, they may not discover “anything much at all” from Blue Team, a bunch of lawmakers on the panel tasked with investigating safety points on the Capitol on the day of the assaults.