House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) announced this week that the House may refer members of the partisan January 6 Committee to the Department of Justice for alleged misconduct involving document concealment and destruction.
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During his ongoing investigation into the January 6 Committee’s activities, Loudermilk revealed that the Committee had disposed of documents and records despite being warned by then-incoming Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to preserve all records. This news comes in the wake of a House report that found that the Democrat-led committee withheld exculpatory evidence about Trump from the public.
Loudermilk explained what may happen with John Solomon of Just The News.
The House Republican leading the current review of security and intelligence failures during the 2021 Capitol riot put former lawmakers and staff on the now-defunct Democrat-run Jan. 6 committee on notice Wednesday that he may make referrals for criminal obstruction or House ethics violations.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga,, the chairman of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee, told Just the News he is frustrated that videotapes of interviews, transcripts and other evidence that Congress gathered under the prior Jan. 6 inquiry run by Democrats was deleted, destroyed, moved to other federal agencies or locked behind passwords that have not been recovered, and he believes some form of accountability is warranted.
“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Loudermilk said during an interview with Just the News, No Noise television show. “But I think that’s going to be a little ways down the road, because there is so much more information that we need to get. And we need to build not only this, to get the truth out to the American people, but see just how big this case potentially is for obstructing.”
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Loudermilk specifically called out Rep. Bennie Thompson, (D-Miss.), the previous head of the Jan 6 Select Committee, suggesting that Thompson relinquished decision-making authority to ex-Rep. Liz Cheney.
“There’s still documents that we need to get hold of. We still don’t have passwords for the encrypted documents,” Loudermilk said. “It’s amazing that you know, when I asked the former Chairman Bennie Thompson, ‘all I want you to do is give me the passwords.’ He said, ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’ Well, I think it’s coming down to he probably didn’t, because now new information we’re getting is that Liz Cheney ran that committee.”
Lawmakers and congressional staff have considerable immunity from legal consequences for their official actions under the Constitution’s separation of powers, but Loudermilk plans to determine accountability once evidence access is resolved. He said that options like criminal referrals for obstruction, congressional censure, or referral to the House Ethics Committee are all on the table.
“Those are options. We also have to look at what other options are there. There’s also censure-ship, ethics, obviously, but also consider there are members of that Select Committee who are no longer members of Congress. So they may fall under a different scenario,” he said. “So we do have the tools of members of Congress, but also, active members of Congress have certain protections. So we’ll have to work on that. Because as you talked about earlier, we’re in uncharted territory right now. And so we’re going to have to work through this.”
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Bring it on.