Newly surfaced reports have revealed that the former US House panel investigating the 2021 Capitol riot deleted dozens of files from their findings last year, just as Democrats were set to lose their majority in the lower congressional chamber in January.
Findings have revealed that 117 files were deleted on January 1, 2023, and that in addition to being deleted documents were also encrypted.
However, not all was lost as investigators have since been able to recover the files, according to a digital forensics team hired by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight which made the discovery. Fox News first reported the incident.
Handling such vital data has caused some disquiet among Republican House members. Subcommittee member Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) confirmed the authenticity of the reports to the media, stating that the panel does not know the full contents of the deleted data.
“The Democrat-led J6 Select Committee obviously took great strides to shield certain information from us...The question is: why? What are they trying to hide? Their whole plan was to ‘get to the truth of the matter.’ They obviously didn’t want the real truth, just ‘their’ truth," another panel member, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), disclosed to the press.
The Republican-led committee has made interesting findings. “One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” per extracts from Loudermilk’s letter seen by media, which implies an earlier admission by Thompson not filing all data. Among the unarchived files are “specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security.”
Loudermilk has since requested the “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of the testimonies from the Department of Homeland Security and the White House Counsel’s Office. He demanded their compliance to turn in the files by January 24, 2024.
The Georgia lawmaker has also lauded current House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) support toward the committee’s investigation. He told news outlets that forensic professionals recovered “numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee.”
“If the former January 6 Select Committee has nothing to hide, then why would they prevent Americans from seeing all the evidence produced in their investigation? They were hiding something, and we will continue to uncover the truth,” Loudermilk remarked.