Rep. Barry Loudermilk released a report Tuesday summing up his efforts to reshape the narrative surrounding Jan. 6, 2021. But don’t call it “final.”
“We’re not calling it a final report because there are still a lot of loose ends,” said the Georgia Republican, who chairs the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee.
Over the past two years, Loudermilk has taken aim at the select committee that investigated the Capitol attack while Democrats controlled the House. He has accused that committee of various failings and vowed to go point by point through its work.
Now Loudermilk says he wants to keep that push alive, and even expand it in the next Congress. In his view, House Republicans need to convene their own investigative select panel, providing the freedom and power to reach new conclusions and to probe the Capitol Police and campus security.
It comes as Donald Trump signals he might pardon some convicted Jan. 6 rioters within “the first nine minutes” after reclaiming the White House next month. The incoming president has also suggested that members of the Jan. 6 select committee should “go to jail.”
The report hits similar notes, steering the blame away from Trump and toward Democrats, the Capitol Police and the intelligence community. It recommends that former Rep. Liz Cheney, the select committee’s vice chair, should be investigated by the FBI over her handling of witnesses.
In a Tuesday statement, Cheney, R-Wyo., described the report as “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth,” adding that “no reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the now-defunct select committee, accused Loudermilk of rewriting history.
“His so-called ‘report’ is filled with baseless, conclusory allegations rather than facts. That’s because there’s no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears the responsibility for the deadly January 6th attack no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would love to rewrite history for his political purposes,” the Mississippi Democrat said in a statement.
‘Hollywood-produced political theater’
Loudermilk denies that his aim is to absolve Trump, saying instead that he is motivated by shoring up campus security and ensuring that lapses never happen again.
“It wasn’t to exonerate anybody. It wasn’t to say one side was right, one side was wrong. It was to get to the facts of what really happened. Because you can’t fix a problem until you get to the root of the problem,” Loudermilk said.
His frustrations with the select committee are vast and outlined in detail in the 128-page report. Among them are that it had too few Republicans and that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some members recommended by then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
The panel did not preserve some video recordings of transcribed interviews it conducted with witnesses, according to the report, which seeks to establish a larger pattern of missing documents.
Thompson pushed back, saying in his statement that “the Select Committee followed all House Rules, and it did not withhold or destroy any record that was required to be archived.”
And Rep. Norma J. Torres, ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee, called the report “disappointing.” The California Democrat said information had not been shared with her and characterized Loudermilk’s pursuit as a “solo mission.”
“I’m very concerned at where he’s going with this,” Torres said. “Not just for the members they’ve been targeting, but for Capitol Police, the brave officers that defended us on Jan. 6.”
More than anything, Loudermilk — once a target of the select committee himself for a Jan. 5, 2021, tour he gave of the Capitol campus — aims to present Jan. 6 as an unsettled matter.
“The Select Committee, with its more than eighteen million dollar budget, resulted in little more than Hollywood-produced political theater and wasted taxpayer dollars to create an error-filled narrative,” the report states.
The report singles out Cheney, painting her as a political actor and scrutinizing her communication with Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump staffer who delivered bombshell testimony. Those efforts have already provided fodder to groups like America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, which cited Loudermilk’s work as it announced it was submitting a District of Columbia bar complaint against Cheney this fall.
Asked whether he agrees with Trump that members of the select committee should be jailed, Loudermilk said, “It isn’t my call as to whether anybody needs to go to jail. But it does need to be looked at. And I think the House needs to look at the violation of House rules by members that are still here.”
Freedom to operate
If Loudermilk has his druthers, he could be the one to lead the charge in the 119th Congress.
Forming a select committee would require buy-in from Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been a vocal supporter of Loudermilk’s push to release Jan. 6 security footage to the public. At least as of last week, Loudermilk said he had only spoken briefly with the top House Republican on the subject.
Johnson, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
While Loudermilk is proud of the work he has done under the auspices of House Administration, he said he would relish the independent subpoena power afforded by a select committee, whereas now all requests go through Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis.
Steil was named House Administration chair for the 118th Congress despite the fact that Loudermilk had served on the committee longer. Loudermilk said he had not yet spoken to Steil about his hopes of continuing the investigation away from House Administration next year.
As the fourth anniversary of the Capitol attack approaches, Thompson, for one, said he remains firm in his conclusions.
“Mr. Loudermilk’s failure to find a single valid problem with the Select Committee’s work reflects the inescapable conclusion from that violent day: Donald Trump orchestrated a multi-part conspiracy that attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election by summoning a mob to Washington to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history,” he said in his statement.
A flurry of legislation was enacted following the Jan. 6 attack, including one bill to allow the chief of Capitol Police to call directly for assistance from the D.C. National Guard, and another to make it more difficult for Congress to object to Electoral College results.
And at a Senate hearing last week, Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger announced the department has closed out the roughly 100 post-Jan. 6 inspector general recommendations aimed at addressing deficiencies that existed ahead of the attack.
Loudermilk remains unconvinced.
“Closing out an IG report is a lot different than fixing a problem. Maybe they did fix those. Maybe they didn’t. But you’re not going to know until we really get into this,” Loudermilk said. “And it’s going to take a willingness to get things turned around, because right now I do not believe that the Capitol is really more secure today than it was on Jan. 6, of 2021.”
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