The Jan. 6 Committee liked to pretend that they were investigating what happened that day.
But the whole thing was about trying to hurt the Republicans in the run-up to the midterm elections because they certainly didn’t seem to care much about anything other than trying to attack former President Donald Trump. And now, there’s more evidence to indicate just how problematic the Committee was in that quest.
As we previously reported, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), the chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the Committee on House Administration, has been looking into their actions. He says now that the Jan. 6 Committee failed to preserve documents, data, and video depositions and that the Committee — which ended last year — failed to turn over what it was required to turn over — including the communications it had with the Biden White House.
Hmm, I wonder why they wouldn’t turn those over?
Loudermilk said that the Committee also didn’t show that they truly looked into the security failures (which was supposed to be part of what they were doing) and what he did get from the Democrat-run Jan. 6 Committee was a mess.
“Part of our task as this oversight subcommittee is to actually address the security failures, look into how did it happen… how were these folks able to get into the Capitol,” Loudermilk said. He said the documents they obtained came over in boxes and was completely unorganized.
“Nothing was indexed. There was no table of contents index. Usually when you conduct this level of investigation, you use a database system and everything is digitized, indexed. We got nothing like that. We just got raw data,” he said. “So it took us a long time going through it and one thing I started realizing is we don’t have anything much at all from the Blue Team.”
The “Blue Team,” as described by Loudermilk, represents the group within the J6 committee that was directed to investigate security failures at the Capitol. Loudermilk explained that sources have told him the Blue Team was essentially “shut down” by the committee in order to focus on placing the blame on former President Trump.
“We’ve got lots of depositions, we’ve got lots of subpoenas, we’ve got video and other documents provided through subpoenas by individuals. But we’re not seeing anything from the Blue Team as far as reports on the investigation they did looking into the actual breach itself,” he said.
“What we also realized we didn’t have was the videos of all the depositions,” Loudermilk added.
The congressman also said they were required to turn over all this material by law, but they didn’t do so. The Chair of the Jan. 6 Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), is claiming they handed over everything.
In response, Thompson wrote a letter saying that Loudermilk’s letter had many “factual errors” and claimed his committee had followed the rules and turned over “4 terabytes” of data.
Loudermilk told Fox News Digital that his committee has only received 2.5 terabytes of data and said the first footnote in Thompson’s letter to him on July 7 acknowledged they did not keep what they were supposed to.
In that footnote, Thompson wrote, “Consistent with guidance from the Office of the Clerk and other authorities, the Select Committee did not archive temporary committee records that were not elevated by the Committee’s actions, such as use in hearings or official publications, or those that did not further its investigative activities. Accordingly, and contrary to your letter’s implication, the Select Committee was not obligated to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions. Based on guidance from House authorities, the Select Committee determined that the written transcripts provided by nonpartisan, professional official reporters, which the witnesses and Select Committee staff had the opportunity to review for errata, were the official, permanent records of transcribed interviews and depositions for the purposes of rule VII.”
“He’s saying they decided they didn’t have to,” Loudermilk told Fox News Digital. “It was clear in law they had to especially and, I mean, if there was any question, the fact that they used the videos in the hearings would dictate that it had to be preserved. The more we go in the more we’re realizing that there’s things that we don’t have. We don’t have anything about security failures at the Capitol, we don’t have the videos of the depositions.”
The plot thickens.
Loudermilk said that he happened to find a letter — one that the Committee didn’t turn over — showing communication from Thompson to Richard Sauber, who is the White House special counsel to Joe Biden, and the DHS about an “agreement” between the Jan. 6 Committee and the executive branch “to interview personnel whose names were later redacted.”
“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,” Loudermilk wrote to Thompson. “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.”
“Why didn’t they preserve this?” Loudermilk said to Fox News Digital. “Did they not want us to know that there were documents that they had sent back to the executive branch?”
Thompson’s answer to the letter is laughable. He wrote that the Committee “did not have to the opportunity to properly archive” it with the rest of the records. Now, he takes us for fools if he thinks anyone is buying that answer.
It gets better. The letter indicates that the Jan. 6 Committee loaned documents to the White House, according to Loudermilk.
“The heavily redacted letter memorializing the ‘loan’ of documents to the White House was published as part of the Government Publishing Office’s public release of documents from the Select Committee,” Loudermilk wrote. “However, the original, unredacted letter from the Select Committee to you, as well as the records referenced in the letter, were not provided to the Committee on House Administration as required by House Rules.”
Again, one would have to ask: why? And why is the Biden White House involved in communication with what’s supposed to be the workings of an “independent” Committee? Now Loudermilk is demanding that the White House turn over any documents that they may have received as well as the unredacted form.
“We’ve got enough to know that there was a huge intelligence failure,” Loudermilk said. “I think Chairman Thompson’s response to me is indicting of him. It’s almost like saying, okay, yeah, we decided not to give you stuff. And I’m reading it as, Oh, you decided not to give us the things that you didn’t want us to see. I mean, that’s kind of the way you have to look at this.”
Trump blasted the alleged deletion of records and suggested it was because he now had “subpoena power” because of the indictment against him.
Donald Trump reacts to the news that the J6 Committee deleted their records: “That's a criminal act”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 10, 2023
Now how’s that for a karmic circle? They wanted to try to get Trump, but now they may have stepped in it themselves by their actions. I think we need another committee to ask Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney what was going on here.
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