exclusive: Just days before Republicans assumed the House majority, the former House Select Committee removed more than 100 encrypted files from its investigation on January 6, FOX News Digital learned.
The House Administration Committee Oversight Subcommittee, led by Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), is leading the investigation on January 6, 2021. The committee is investigating security failures that day and the “actions” of the former special committee investigating the Capitol riot.
House of Commons inquiry into 'what really happened on January 6th' enters 'new phase' with Johnson's support
Loudermilk told Fox News Digital last week that his investigation has entered a “new phase” with new support from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who has committed additional resources to the committee's investigation. said.
People familiar with the Loudermilk investigation told Fox News Digital that, under House rules, the former select committee, chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, was unable to provide any information included in the investigation. He was reportedly asked to hand over the documents to the New Republican Party. He led the panel after Republicans secured a majority in the House after the 2022 midterm elections.
Trump supporters occupy the west facade and inauguration stands of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc, via Getty Images)
Sources told Fox News Digital that Thompson told Loudermilk that the select committee would turn over 4 terabytes of archived data, but that the new committee would only receive about 2 terabytes of data.
Fox News Digital revealed that Loudermilk's committee hired a digital forensics team to scrape hard drives to determine what information was not given.
A forensic team determined that 117 files had been deleted and encrypted, according to a source familiar with the investigation. According to officials, these files were deleted on January 1, 2023. It comes just days before Thompson's team was required to forward the data to the new committee.
Fox News Digital revealed that its forensic team recovered all 117 files that were deleted and encrypted. Loudermilk is currently asking for an answer and password to access the data.
Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a letter Loudermilk sent to Thompson requesting access to the forensic team's recovered digital files.
“As you acknowledged in your letter dated July 7, 2023, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (Select Committee) is a member of the Special Committee as required by the rules of the House of Representatives. did not archive meeting records,” Loudermilk wrote. “You wrote that you sent specific interviews and depositions to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, but did not archive them with the House Clerk.”
Rep. Loudermilk, Jan. 6, blasts committee targeting him: “There's a war on truth going on in this country.''
Loudermilk added that Thompson also claimed, “You claimed to have handed over four terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than three terabytes of data.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson and Rep. Liz Cheney sit on the special committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol on October 13, 2022. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc, via Getty Images)
Loudermilk explained that as a result of forensic analysis of the data and archived hard drives, they were able to recover “numerous digital records from the hard drives archived by the task force.”
“One of the recovered files revealed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the task force,” Loudermilk wrote. “Additionally, we found that most of the recovered files were password protected, making it impossible to determine their contents.”
Loudermilk asked Thompson to provide “a copy of all password-protected files created by the task force” so that his committee could “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.” asked for a list of passwords.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Meanwhile, Mr. Loudermilk also sent a letter to the White House General Counsel and the Department of Homeland Security General Counsel requesting “unedited and unedited transcripts” of testimony to former White House and Department of Homeland Security task forces. .
Mr. Loudermilk's committee said it was aware that records of those interviews existed, but they were not turned over by Mr. Thompson's committee.
Loudermilk asked the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to comply with his request by January 24th.
“It is clear that Ms. Pelosi's special committee went to great lengths to keep certain documents produced in the investigation from being seen by the American people. Also, Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney appears to have intended to obstruct our subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and video as required by House rules,'' Loudermilk told FOX News Digital.
“The American people have a right to know the full truth, and Chairman Johnson has authorized me, and I will do the same, to use whatever tools we have to retrieve these documents to get to the truth. will do.”
