Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., revealed gross abuses by the Democrats’ partisan Jan. 6 select committee in a new report on Monday.
Loudermilk, whose Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight spent the prior year reviewing the work of the select committee led by then-Rep. and committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, found the J6 probe covered up critical evidence that undermined the Democrats’ narratives amid the 2022 midterms.
“For nearly two years former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th Select Committee promoted hearsay and cherry-picked information to promote its political goal — to legislatively prosecute former President Donald Trump,” Loudermilk said. “It was no surprise that the Select Committee’s final report focused primarily on former President Trump and his supporters, not the security failures and reforms needed to ensure the United States Capitol is safer today than in 2021.”
Loudermilk’s subcommittee detailed the investigation’s initial findings this week, over a year after a separate Republican review of the Capitol security failures on Jan. 6, 2021, found Pelosi culpable for turning down requests to preemptively call in the National Guard.
The Cover Up
Weeks after Republicans reclaimed the House in 2022, then-GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, to “preserve all records collected and transcripts of testimony taken during your investigation.” Loudermilk’s investigators, however, found that Thompson’s committee deleted troves of information, including “hundreds of video recordings.”
Loudermilk’s subcommittee also “discovered that the Select Committee failed to archive more than a terabyte of digital data.”
“The Select Committee also deleted or failed to turn over more than 100 digital documents from the hard drives the Select Committee provided to the Subcommittee,” Loudermilk’s report read. “This included numerous password and encrypted files, and in some cases, these files were deleted just days before Republicans took over the majority in January 2023.”
On Friday, Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway exposed the J6 committee for concealing testimony from former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato. On Jan. 28, 2022, in his first interview with the select committee, Ornato told lawmakers he overheard Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urge D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to mobilize as many National Guard troops as needed.
“He also testified President Trump had suggested 10,000 would be needed to keep the peace at the public rallies and protests scheduled for January 6, 2021,” Hemingway reported. “Ornato also described White House frustration with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller’s slow deployment of assistance on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.”
Ornato’s testimony directly contradicts the Jan. 6 committee’s narrative of a president fanning the flames of “insurrection.”
[READ: Liz Cheney Covered Up Trump’s Push For National Guard On J6 In Political Memoir]
A few months later, the Jan. 6 committee’s surprise star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked for Meadows, testified publicly that Ornato told her President Trump tried to violently hijack the presidential limousine to drive himself to the Captiol during the riot. Immediately after her grand appearance, however, Ornato said he was prepared to go on record under oath to say that nothing Hutchinson described ever took place. Ornato had even previously told lawmakers that there were never any plans for the president to travel to the Capitol:
No. I did not know that. I mean, I don’t think — that couldn’t have happened. Nobody had — nobody would be prepared for that. There would be no security to do that. There would be no — I mean, that was like I said, talked about a couple of days, whenever it was prior, and it was scoffed at and moved on, and I never heard about it again.
Not Just Ornato
Ornato was not the only administration official whose testimony undermined Hutchinson’s credibility. Loudermilk’s report cited “four White House employees” who gave testimony that “directly contradicts claims made by Cassidy Hutchinson.”
“None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about President Trump lunging for the steering wheel of the Beast,” read the new report. “None of them ever testified they heard anything even similar to the story recounted by Hutchinson.”
One former White House employee also contradicted Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump made a comment implying support for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence. The unnamed staffer “testified that neither the President nor any other staff made comments” about the chants to “Hang Mike Pence” at the Capitol.
J6 Committee Colluded with Fani Willis
In December, House Republicans sent letters to Chairman Thompson and Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who indicted Trump, to probe coordination between the two get-Trump investigations. Loudermilk’s report on Monday outlined probable collusion between Thompson’s efforts on the Jan. 6 committee and Willis’ political prosecution of the Republican presidential front-runner and presumptive nominee.
“Based on public reporting, the Select Committee shared important records with Willis and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office,” Loudermilk’s team wrote. “The Subcommittee has opened an investigation into the extent of the coordination between Willis and the Select Committee and is committed to uncovering answers to these questions.”
Willis is currently under investigation for hiring a special prosecutor on the Trump case with whom she had a romantic relationship.
