"Sure you can have the files."
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"Oh, no! We deleted them!"
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) accused the former chairman of the now-dissolved Jan. 6 committee on Monday of improperly archiving committee data, saying some items were missing, deleted, or encrypted.
Loudermilk wrote to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) that more than a terabyte of information appeared missing from the hard drives archived with the clerk of the House and that “numerous digital records” he uncovered were password protected, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Loudermilk chairs the House Administration Committee’s oversight subcommittee and has been investigating the work of the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee since Republicans took over the House majority last year. The Jan. 6 panel used a deep well of resources; it spent millions of dollars, held prime-time public hearings, and interviewed hundreds of witnesses before it dissolved at the end of 2022. Prior to its ending, the committee released an 845-page final report and referred former President Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for allegedly spurring the Jan. 6 riot.
"That's OK, we recovered them!"
the subcommittee had hired a digital forensic team to scrape the Jan. 6 committee’s hard drives. The team recently uncovered 117 files that had been deleted on Jan. 1, 2023, the source said.
"But they're encrypted, and we don't have the password."
The source noted that the contents of the deleted files are unknown at this stage because they were all encrypted.
Loudermilk in his letter demanded Thompson provide him with all applicable passwords to access the encrypted data.
“One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk also said.
