A select subcommittee to continue a Republican-led reinvestigation of the events around Jan. 6, 2021, has officially been given the green light.
It’s been a long time coming for Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who helmed a similar subpanel under the House Administration Committee last Congress and lobbied leadership for a new venue in the 119th. Roughly eight months after Loudermilk and Speaker Mike Johnson announced their intentions to form the subcommittee — and after prolonged negotiations — he’s finally cleared to get to work.
No roster for the subcommittee has been announced, but Loudermilk said Wednesday he had plans to meet later that afternoon with the speaker’s office and expects to be up and running “very quickly.”
“It’s like deer hunting. The fun ends when you pull the trigger. Now you’ve got to clean the deer. Now the work begins,” Loudermilk said outside the House chamber following the vote. “I want to be able to get to the truth, find out where the failures were, and let’s fix them. That’s all we’re asking.”
House leaders tucked the resolution creating the subpanel, which will operate under the Judiciary Committee, into a rule teeing up the fiscal 2026 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill and other measures, avoiding a standalone vote on the highly controversial Jan. 6 subcommittee. The House voted on party lines in favor of the rule, authorizing the subcommittee in the process through a tactic known as “deem and pass.”
The panel will consist of five Republicans appointed by Johnson, R-La., and three Democrats appointed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and is instructed to publish a final report at the end of the 119th Congress, according to the resolution.
Democrats have panned Loudermilk’s efforts around Jan. 6 as a thinly-veiled attempt to redirect blame for the attack and exonerate President Donald Trump, who fueled conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. They’ve pointed to the fact that Loudermilk was investigated by the Jan. 6 select committee led by Democrats in the 117th Congress for allegedly leading a reconnaissance tour the day before the attack, though Capitol Police cleared him of wrongdoing.
“We welcome yet another chance to remind Americans of House Republicans’ ongoing complicity with — and embarrassing apologetics for — MAGA’s violent insurrection,” House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in a statement Wednesday.
Raskin helped probe Trump’s role in the events of Jan. 6 when he was a member of the Democrat-led select committee. He said Loudermilk and House Republicans haven’t “laid a glove on a single fact” presented in the panel’s final report, which referred Trump to the Justice Department for suspected crimes.
“Their determination to return to the scene of thousands of crimes committed by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3%ers and other MAGA accomplices gives us a chance to teach young Americans about the dangers of political and religious cults and authoritarian leaders,” Raskin said.
The announcement of plans for the new subcommittee earlier this year came directly on the heels of Trump’s decision to pardon most Jan. 6 defendants. Since then, the government agreed to a nearly $5 million settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the melee.
Loudermilk, as chair of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee in the 118th Congress, led the charge to publish Jan. 6-related security footage online. He produced a report and documents clearing his own name. And he took aim at Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming Republican lawmaker who sat on the Jan. 6 select committee and has become a vocal Trump critic.
In a final report released in December, Loudermilk recommended that Cheney should be investigated by the FBI for her handling of witnesses.
Cheney at the time described the findings as “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth,” adding that “no reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
Despite accusations of whitewashing, Loudermilk said he’s not out to rewrite history.
From his new perch leading the select subpanel, Loudermilk said he wants to better understand the politics that may have led to a delay in calling the National Guard to assist law enforcement during the attack. He also wants to look closer at the confidential informants the FBI has acknowledged were in the crowd that day and how intelligence agencies missed warnings about the impending attack.
“How did they not know this was coming, if you pay somebody to give you intelligence, right?” Loudermilk said. “I think the answer is, they probably did. What did they do with that intelligence?”
Democrats on Wednesday reupped their criticisms of the effort.
Rep. Jim McGovern, ranking member on the House Rules Committee, said Republicans were creating the committee “to rewrite the history of what happened here on Jan. 6, 2021. They are so desperate to paper over what happened that day, to whitewash it, and to pretend it was a normal tourist visit.”
The Massachusetts Democrat noted Republicans’ refusal to hang a plaque on the west side of the Capitol honoring officers who were there that day. Two officers who defended the Capitol filed a lawsuit in June to try to compel the installation of the plaque.
“That plaque … already exists. Congress already passed a law to create it. The speaker just refuses to display it. Why?” McGovern said from the House floor Wednesday. “This is not a deliberative body anymore. Under this Republican majority, Congress has become a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. This is all about the ego of the man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
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