House Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., has requested 15 federal agencies to provide all documents previously submitted to the Jan. 6 Select Committee following the failure of the Democrat-led committee to transfer most of these files to the new Republican majority after the 2022 election.
Loudermilk's House Administration Committee Subcommittee on Oversight is examining the response of various federal agencies and the Capitol Police to the events of Jan. 6, as well as the actions and final report of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee.
Under Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, the Select Committee on January 6 collected numerous records from federal agencies and the DC government. However, only a small portion of these records were archived and handed over to House Republicans in January 2023. As a result, Congressman Loudermilk is compelled to duplicate the work of the Select Committee, according to a statement from the subcommittee announcing the letters to the federal agencies.
These requests follow the committee's previous recovery of over 100 files that were deleted by the Democratic select committee just days before the GOP took control of the House in 2023. A digital forensics team hired by Loudermilk discovered that a terabyte of data was missing from the Jan. 6 Select Committee's records.
Loudermilk also disclosed last year that recorded interviews with key Jan. 6 witnesses were missing. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who led the Jan. 6 Select Committee, responded that he did not believe he was required to preserve them.
“By requesting these records directly from federal and DC agencies, which should still have records of what was provided to the Select Committee, Chairman Loudermilk is working to determine specifically how many documents were not properly archived, in order to conduct a full investigation and publish the full truth for the American people to make their own conclusions about what happened on January 6, 2021,” the press release states.
