Files recovered but are password-protected, subcommittee says.
The U.S. House of Representatives committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol deleted more than 100 files before Republicans took the majority in the lower chamber, according to newly disclosed documents.
A forensic analysis of hard drives archived by the now-disbanded, Democrat-dominated committee uncovered digital records that weren’t given to the House clerk, the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee said in new letters to top officials.
“Our subcommittee has recently determined that 117 files were both deleted and encrypted,” a spokesman for Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the subcommittee, told The Epoch Times via email.
The encryption means that many of the recovered files are password-protected and cannot be accessed at this time, Mr. Loudermilk told Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in a letter dated Jan. 18. Mr. Thompson was chairman of the House’s Jan. 6 select committee.
“In order to access these files and ensure they are properly archived, I ask that you provide a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the select committee,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote.
Mr. Thompson’s spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The committee wrapped up its work near the end of 2022, around the time Republicans flipped control of the House. The committee’s authorization expired at the end of the session just before the GOP gained control in early 2023.
Mr. Loudermilk, whose subcommittee is investigating Jan. 6, 2021, and events related to the breach of the Capitol, said in late 2023 that tapes of depositions conducted by the select committee had vanished.
Mr. Thompson confirmed in a letter that the tapes weren’t preserved.
“He didn’t feel that they had to,” Mr. Loudermilk said, although House rules required the preservation of the records, the lawmaker said.
“You wrote that you sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the clerk of the House. You also claimed that you turned over 4-terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the select committee with the clerk of the House contain less than 3-terabytes of data,” Mr. Loudermilk said in the new letter.
