A House panel has recovered more than 100 “deleted” and encrypted files from the January 6 Committee, a GOP investigator announced on Monday.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, affirmed the retrieval as part of a counter-inquiry into the January 6 Committee that shut down at the beginning of 2023.
“The former J6 Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing all the evidence produced in their investigation,” Loudermilk said in a post to X. “Our Subcommittee has recovered over 100 deleted & encrypted files. What else were they trying to hide?”
Loudermilk was responding to a Fox News report that said he wrote to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who chaired the January 6 Committee, demanding a list of passwords that would allow his forensic team to gain access to the locked files. Thompson replied with a letter that claimed he had “no idea” what Loudermilk was talking about when it came to encrypted, password-protected files.
The pair have traded a number of letters over the past year in which Loudermilk raised concerns about the January 6 Committee not properly archiving video recordings of interviews and depositions in the House as well as transcripts mentioned in a letter to the Homeland Security Department that referenced “important information” gained “from an unnamed Secret Service witness.”
Thompson has insisted the January 6 Committee was “was not obligated” to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions, but he conceded the panel “did not have the opportunity to properly archive” certain sensitive materials because it was dissolved before the completion of an executive branch review of information that could be damaging to witnesses if released.
In his newest letter, Loudermilk said one of the recovered files “disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee.” He added that the “hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3- terabytes of data,” suggesting some data may be missing as Thompson had touted a 4-terabyte digital archive.
Loudermilk also wrote to the White House and DHS general counsels seeking “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of testimony given to the January 6 Committee by the White House and DHS, per Fox News. He set a January 24 deadline for those requests.
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Whatever information may be in the protected files remains a mystery, though the Washington Times noted that Loudermilk said the missing documents include information shared with the Department of Justice and Fulton County District Attorney. Former President Donald Trump, who is being prosecuted in January 6-related cases, said the records would have “exonerated” him.
The January 6 Committee was bipartisan, with then-Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as members, but many Republicans have criticized the endeavor. Loudermilk himself accused the panel of spreading false allegations about him giving a “reconnaissance tour” a day before the U.S. Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. Now, there are obstruction claims.
“It should come as a surprise to no one that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney’s fake committee illegally deleted records of their sham investigation and obstructed justice,” House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said on Tuesday.