Politics
January 6 Committee Members Could Soon Face Criminal Referrals, GOP Congressman Says
U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) has suggested that members of the House January 6 Committee could face criminal referrals as a result of destroying records.
Loudermilk has been investigating the conduct of the partisan committee — which defied more than 100 years of House precedent when then-GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was barred from picking opposition members — since they presented their findings.
Last year, Loudermilk revealed that the committee had destroyed documents, text messages and other records. This was done despite orders from incoming House Speaker McCarthy to preserve all records relating to the investigation.
While speaking with John Solomon of Just The News earlier this week, Loudermilk suggested that the House could soon be drafting criminal referrals for former Reps. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and others.
“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Loudermilk said. “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.”
The Georgia Republican also stated that other measures, such as censorship or referrals to the House Ethics Committee, are also on the table if the members are shielded from prosecution.
“We also have to look at what other options are. There’s also censorship, ethics, obviously. But also consider there are members of that select committee that are no longer members of Congress. So they may fall under a different scenario. So we do have the tools of members of Congress, but also active members of Congress have certain protections,” Loudermilk said. “So we’ll have to work on that because as you talked about earlier, we’re in uncharted territory right now.”
The January 6 committee — which hired a Hollywood producer to spice up its primetime hearings — telegraphed numerous bits of misinformation to the American people. In one instance, the committee aired testimony from former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who claimed that Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel of a secret service vehicle and drive back to the Capitol when the protests devolved into a riot. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by Secret Service agents.
The committee also cherry-picked video footage and failed to mention that police caused the riot by firing crowd control munitions at peaceful protesters. This footage, along with 14,000 additional hours, were hidden from the American people in favor of cherry-picked clips.