(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., has revealed that the now-defunct, Democrat-controlled Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 files from its politicized investigation of the Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot.
Fox News reported Monday that the Jan. 6 Committee deleted the encrypted files from its probe just days before Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives.
Fox reported that Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chaired the Jan. 6 Committee, promised to provide four terabytes of archived data, but that Loudermilk and his colleagues have only received approximately two terabytes of data to date. Loudermilk is leading a new GOP effort to investigate Jan. 6.
“As you acknowledged in your July 7, 2023 letter, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Select Committee) did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules,” Loudermilk wrote in a letter to Thompson, obtained first by Fox News.
“You wrote that you sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”
Loudermilk reportedly added that Thompson also “claimed that you turned over 4-terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3- terabytes of data.”
According to Fox, Loudermilk was able to recover “numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee” by hiring a team to conduct forensic analysis of the data and archived hard drives.
“One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk reportedly wrote. “Further, we found that most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain.”
Loudermilk reportedly asked that Thompson provide him “a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the Select Committee” so that his committee can “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.”
Loudermilk’s statements corroborate claims Fox News host Jesse Watters made in August, when he said the Jan. 6 Committee destroyed approximately half of its evidence.
“The Democrat-run Jan. 6 committee is missing one and a half terabytes of data,” Watters said at the time, noting that such a volume likely includes critical records of security failures on Capitol Hill, as well as video depositions from Trump’s Cabinet members.
The missing data will likely include emails and text messages, as well, according to Waters.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
