House Republicans voted on Wednesday to establish a new subcommittee to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, moving to reopen one of the most polarizing chapters in American politics.
Lawmakers slipped a resolution into a rule on the House floor that would establish the subcommittee, which is likely to be headed by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia). Republicans have complained that the original probe, which was led by Democrats, was biased against President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly denied he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
Loudermilk has already helmed one inquiry into Jan. 6: He used a subcommittee of the House Administration Committee to conduct a follow-up to the Democratic-led investigation after Republicans retook control of the House in 2023.
“We’re going to continue the work that we did last time, which is looking at the evidence to still try to understand: How did the Capitol get breached? There was a huge security failure here,” Loudermilk said.
Democrats said they weren’t aware the resolution had been added to the rule until it was debated in the House Rules Committee on Tuesday night.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), a member of the first committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, said in a statement: “We welcome yet another chance to remind Americans of House Republicans’ ongoing complicity with — and embarrassing apologetics for — MAGA’s violent insurrection against Congress and Vice-President Mike Pence and Trump’s sinister attempt to overthrow a presidential election.”
The resolution would establish a select subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee with a total of eight members to be appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and not more than three to be appointed “in consultation” with the Democratic minority. Loudermilk said he believed Democrats would not be constrained in their choice of appointees….