The select committee’s deletion of the files violates House rules.
Last August, a report surfaced that the whereabouts of some of the files pertaining to events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were unknown. This included transcriptions of videos, recordings of interviews and depositions, and other items. It was suggested that the House J6 committee may have destroyed them once it issued its report and disbanded in December 2022.
House Rule VII requires the preservation of House records at the end of each two-year term. The chair of the J6 committee, Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, claimed the rules of the House had been followed.
The current House Administration Oversight Committee Chair, Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, sent a letter to Representative Thompson requesting items such as passwords for retrieving the data, which is believed to have been deleted. Some information has been received, but the committee hired a digital forensics team to determine what information had not been provided.
The forensics team has recovered over 100 files that were encrypted and deleted on January 1, 2023, two days before the new Congress was sworn in and the new investigatory committee was established. Representative Loudermilk believes there could be more and has asked the former chairman to provide a “list of passwords” for all of the prior select committee’s files.
Representative Loudermilk said the select committee under Speaker Pelosi prevented Americans “from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation“ and failed “to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules.” He added, “This is not the first report of missing data from the Jan. 6 select committee.”
As the Lord Leads, Pray with Us…
- For Chair Loudermilk as he seeks access to information the select committee has not disclosed.
- For the members of the current committee as they attempt to make the results of the prior investigation transparent to the public.
Sources: Just the News, USA Today
