2024-01-22 08:00:15
House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk told Fox News he started an investigation into allegations the January 6 committee deleted encrypted files before the GOP took control of the House:
“It’s obvious that Pelosi’s Select Committee 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,” Loudermilk told Fox News Digital.
“The American people deserve to know the full truth, and Speaker Johnson has empowered me to use all tools necessary to recover these documents to get the truth, and I will.”
From Fox News:
The House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee is leading an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, led by Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga. The panel is investigating the security failures on that day, as well as the “actions” of the former select committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Loudermilk, last week, told Fox News Digital his investigation has entered a “new phase” with renewed support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has committed additional resources to the panel’s investigation.
Sources familiar with Loudermilk’s investigation told Fox News Digital that, per House rules, the former select committee, which was chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., was required to turn over all documents from its investigation to the new, GOP-led panel, after Republicans secured the majority of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections.
Thompson supposedly told Loudermilk that the committee would give him “four terabytes of archived footage.”
The committee only got two terabytes.
A digital forensics team discovered “that 117 files were both deleted and encrypted.” It happened on January 1, 2023, right before Thompson sent the data to the new committee.
The forensics team recovered the 117 files.
Loudermilk wants all the answers and passwords:
Loudermilk added that Thompson 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.”
Loudermilk explained that after a forensic analysis of the data and archived hard drives, he was able to recover “numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee.”
“One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk wrote. “Further, we found that most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain.”
Loudermilk asked that Thompson provide him “a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the Select Committee” so that his committee can “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.”
Loudermilk fell under suspicion of helping orchestrate the Capitol Hill Riot with a tour he gave on January 5, 2021.
It’s beyond ridiculous this ever happened since so many of them give tours:
The House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, raised the issue publicly in a letter last month asking Loudermilk to explain the purpose of his January 5 meeting with a group of constituents. Days after the attack, some Democrats began accusing Republicans of providing tours to individuals who later went on to storm the Capitol.
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger wrote in a letter on Monday to Rep. Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”
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