Rep. Barry Loudermilk is eager to make his next move on Jan. 6, 2021. After leading a reinvestigation of the storming of the Capitol during the last Congress, the Georgia Republican had high hopes for the 119th.
With the support of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., he pushed to deepen his probe. In January, Johnson announced that Loudermilk would lead a new select subcommittee housed within the House Judiciary panel to “uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people.”
But more than a month later, that select subcommittee has not officially been formed.
“I expected it at any time. So I guess you need to talk to the speaker’s office,” Loudermilk said Thursday. “We’re burning daylight here. And there’s a lot we need to be working on already. They say they’re going to do it, we just need to get it done.”
Loudermilk’s splashiest undertaking so far was releasing security footage of the attack to the public. As chair of the now-defunct House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, he worked to undermine the narrative laid out by the Democrat-led select committee previously tasked with investigating Jan. 6, which found that Donald Trump had spurred on his violent supporters in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results.
Loudermilk’s final report, published in December, recommended that former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who served as the Jan. 6 select committee’s vice chair, should be investigated by the FBI for her handling of witnesses.
Democrats vociferously criticized his probe, characterizing it as an effort to clear Trump’s name and whitewash the attack on the Capitol.
“Like criminals returning to the scene of the crime, they can’t stop talking about Jan. 6,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday….