‘As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,’ says Rep. Barry Loudermilk.
The chair of a House subcommittee warned that some members of a controversial Jan. 6 investigatory subcommittee could face charges of hiding and destroying documents.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) said in an interview last week that he may refer former members of the committee to the Department of Justice for prosecution after a report that he commissioned found that its members allegedly hid information from the public.
“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Mr. Loudermilk told Just the News last week after the report was released, referring to the possibility that committee members will face punishment.
“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.”
However, the Georgia lawmaker suggested that there are “other options,” including censuring and ethics referrals.
“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,” Mr. Loudermilk told the media outlet. “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.”
He also said that he believes that Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the now-disbanded Jan. 6 select committee, allowed then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) to make decisions for the panel.
“There’s still documents that we need to get hold of. We still don’t have passwords for the encrypted documents,” Mr. Loudermilk said. “It’s amazing that you know, when I asked the former Chairman Bennie Thompson, ‘All I want you to do is give me the passwords.’ He said, ‘I don’t even know what you’re talking about.’
