A Republican subcommittee chairman is claiming that the head of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) hand-picked January 6 Committee deleted “critical information” just days before Republicans took over Congress and the panel about a year ago.
The Oversight Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee, tasked with scrutinizing both the 2021 Capitol riot and the preceding inquiry led by Democrats, revealed that during the House’s transition to GOP control in 2023, over 100 files were encrypted and deleted from hard drives, the New York Post reported.
The select committee was anticipated to furnish Republican Chairman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia with four terabytes of archived data. Nevertheless, the outlet reported that his committee only received two terabytes of data.
Fox News added: “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.”
Fox reported that the digital forensics firm hired by Loudermilk’s committee uncovered that 117 files were both deleted and encrypted on Jan. 1, 2023, just a few days prior to the Republicans assuming control of the committee and Thompson’s team being mandated to surrender all materials.
BREAKING: Pelosi's Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files days before GOP took majority: sources https://t.co/ZXljvLwqJK #FoxNews
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 22, 2024
“As you acknowledged in your July 7, 2023 letter, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Select Committee) did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules,” Loudermilk wrote. “You wrote that you sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”
Loudermilk noted further that the Mississippi Democrat 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.”
The chairman went on to say that after the forensic analysis of the hard drives and data they contained, 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.”
He asked that Thompson provide the committee with “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.”
