(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., has indicated that he may pursue criminal charges against the members of the Democratic January 6th Commission who destroyed or suppressed evidence about the Capitol Hill uprising.
Loudermilk’s comments come on the heels of his subcommittee releasing a mammoth report on Jan. 6. According to the report, Jan. 6 Commission officials Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney failed to turn over video recordings of witness interviews and depositions despite using these recordings in their high-profile, primetime hearings.
Loudermilk told Just the News on Wednesday that he’s mulling his next step for accountability.
“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Loudermilk said. “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.”
Loudermilk added that he will decide on what to do after his subcommittee resolves access to the evidence that is still missing and determines responsibility. He said options range from a criminal referral to the Justice Department for obstruction to censure by Congress or a referral to the House Ethics Committee for investigation.
“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.”
According to Loudermilk, his subcommittee has recovered over one hundred deleted or password-protected files, including some files that were deleted days before Republicans took the majority.
However, the Jan. 6 Commission also hid multiple transcribed interviews of witnesses who had firsthand knowledge of Trump‘s actions on January, according to his subcommittee report.
Among the suppressed interview transcripts were those taken for the commission’s “star witness,” Cassidy Hutchinson. The report said Hutchinson conducted three transcribed interviews with the Select Committee before substantially revising her story in her fourth transcribed interview. “Despite knowing how significantly her testimony changed, the Select Committee promoted it as fact,” the report said.
Perhaps the most glaring contradiction exposed in the report is Hutchinson’s false statement about President Donald Trump trying to grab the steering wheel of his presidential vehicle and lunging toward his security detail when he was informed that he would not be taken to the Capitol following his Jan. 6 rally.
“Reps. Thompson and Cheney were aware that the Secret Service agent driving the SUV on January 6 directly refuted Hutchinson‘s testimony. Despite this, they still included her testimony in the Final Report and insisted it was credible,” the report’s summary said.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
