Rep. Barry Loudermilk is eager to make his next move on Jan. 6, 2021. After leading a reinvestigation of the storming of the Capitol during the last Congress, the Georgia Republican had high hopes for the 119th.
With the support of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., he pushed to deepen his probe. In January, Johnson announced that Loudermilk would lead a new select subcommittee housed within the House Judiciary panel to “uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people.”
But more than a month later, that select subcommittee has not officially been formed.
“I expected it at any time. So I guess you need to talk to the speaker’s office,” Loudermilk said Thursday. “We’re burning daylight here. And there’s a lot we need to be working on already. They say they’re going to do it, we just need to get it done.”
Loudermilk’s splashiest undertaking so far was releasing security footage of the attack to the public. As chair of the now-defunct House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, he worked to undermine the narrative laid out by the Democrat-led select committee previously tasked with investigating Jan. 6, which found that Donald Trump had spurred on his violent supporters in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
Loudermilk’s final report, published in December, recommended that former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who served as the Jan. 6 select committee’s vice chair, should be investigated by the FBI for her handling of witnesses.
Democrats vociferously criticized his probe, characterizing it as an effort to clear Trump’s name and whitewash the attack on the Capitol.
“Like criminals returning to the scene of the crime, they can’t stop talking about Jan. 6,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday.
But eager as Loudermilk is to carry on this Congress, the effort so far has failed to get off the ground.
In order to establish a select subcommittee, the House must first adopt a resolution. No such resolution has been introduced, leaving Loudermilk’s subcommittee in limbo.
Republican leaders have not announced a roster for the select subcommittee and have not provided an update on when a resolution might be introduced or voted on. The speaker’s office declined to comment.
In his announcement in January, days after Trump gave sweeping pardons to Jan. 6 rioters, Johnson had struck an urgent tone.
“House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117th Congress, but there is still more work to be done,” Johnson said in that statement. “We are establishing this Select Subcommittee to continue our efforts.”
A day later, the Washington Post reported that some Republicans were concerned that any attempt to subpoena Cassidy Hutchinson — who worked for former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and testified before the Jan. 6 select committee — could surface sexually explicit texts sent to her by lawmakers.
Loudermilk, asked shortly after the Post’s story published, said he was unfamiliar with the article but denied its premise. “We decided not to subpoena her because her lawyers were cooperating with us,” Loudermilk said in January.
This week, more than two months into the new Congress, Loudermilk said he’s pressing on and anticipates movement on the new select subcommittee soon. In the meantime, he has joined Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on some Jan. 6-related investigatory letters, like one to employees of the Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney’s Office, led by Fani Willis, asking for documents relating to her contact with the select committee.
Still, the wait has meant he’s lost around two-thirds of the staff members and contractors who worked with him on the earlier iteration of the Jan. 6 reinvestigation, he said.
“Because this has dragged on, a lot of our staff has had to go on and take other jobs,” Loudermilk said. “I was hoping to be able to just pick up where we left off and keep going, but we’re going to have to rebuild a little bit.”
Loudermilk said conversations with the speaker’s office are ongoing at the staff level and they’re working out “jurisdictional issues.”
But Raskin, himself a former Jan. 6 select committee member, indicated that there may be deeper fissures among his GOP colleagues.
“I understand there’s a division on their side. Some of them want to leave well enough alone,” Raskin said. “There are a lot of Republicans who understand that supporting a political coup and a violent insurrection and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers is not going to be a path of political success for them.”
The post ‘We’re burning daylight here’: Latest Jan. 6 probe slow to get off the ground appeared first on Roll Call.
