Barry Loudermilk, the Republican representative from Georgia who has been accused of giving tours of the Capitol building days before the January 6 insurrection, will lead a new House committee that will investigate the Democratic-controlled January 6 select committee.
On Tuesday, Loudermilk criticized the select committee, saying: “The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this.”
“As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again.”
Loudermilk is expected to focus on what he considers “security failure” that led up to the riots two years ago, CNN reports.
In an interview with the outlet, Loudermilk said: “I’m spending some time over there getting my hands wrapped around what we have. We’re going to be looking at what happened in the Capitol. What happened leading up to it? How did we have such a security failure?”
“The January 6 committee, they didn’t take that approach. That should have been something that they looked it. I think they looked more on the political side of it,” he said.
The launch of the new committee comes a week after Republicans established a portal to collect tips from the public regarding the events connected to the riots.
Last year, the Democratic-led January 6 select committee released video footage revealing Loudermilk showing a group of individuals around House office buildings on an unofficial tour at a time when official tours were banned due to Covid-19. The video showed a man who took photos of the various tunnel entrances and the Capitol police checkpoints.
According to the select committee, some of the individuals on the tour went on to attend the Save America rally on Capitol Hill on 6 January, where then president Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol.
Loudermilk has previously denied that he led a tour that was related to the January 6 riots. The Republican congressman then said that he only gave a tour to families with young children before saying that he gave a tour to about 16 people.
In a letter addressed to Loudermilk by the January 6 select committee, chairman and Mississippi Democratic representative Bennie Thompson wrote: “Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists.”
“The January 5, 2021 tour raises concerns about their activity and intent,” it added.
Earlier this week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson released exclusive January 6 security footage provided to him by House speaker Kevin McCarthy during a segment in which he minimized the gravity of the riots.
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” the conservative host said. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now infamous ‘QAnon Shaman’.”
“More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” Carlson added, without airing footage of the more incriminating moments during the riots in which protesters and police fought violently.
