After delay, House Republicans hope to launch new Jan. 6 probe

WASHINGTON — The wait may soon be over for Republicans who want to see a renewed congressional probe of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Six months after he first announced the plan, Speaker Mike Johnson said leaders were aiming to make it a reality after August recess, creating a new select subcommittee to dig once more into the Capitol attack.

“House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117th Congress, but there is clearly more work to be done,” Johnson said in a statement Wednesday.

Before the new body can get off the ground, the House must vote on a resolution to create it, which Johnson said was introduced Wednesday.

The select subcommittee would be led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk and housed under the House Judiciary Committee. It would pick up on the work started by the Georgia Republican last Congress, scrutinizing the findings of the Democrat-led select committee convened in the months immediately after the attack.

Johnson unveiled the effort in January, days after President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons to most of the Capitol rioters, including some who violently assaulted police officers as they tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. But in the intervening months, the effort seemed stalled.

The movement this week is welcome news for Loudermilk, who earlier this Congress expressed frustration over the delay. According to him, many of the aides he’d hired to staff the select subcommittee have since left, as he and Republican leaders wrangled over jurisdictional issues.

Still, he will have to wait a little longer. Since Rules Committee work shut down earlier this week and Johnson sent the House home a day early amid attempts by Democrats (and some Republicans) to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the earliest a vote can happen on the floor is after August recess.

“We’re ready to set things up, and I expect that as soon as we get back,” Loudermilk said on Tuesday. “Unfortunately it’s going to require Rules to get things going. But we’re already starting to work on things. We just need to get it really formalized.”

The resolution faces strong partisan opposition in the House, where Democrats have labeled the push to revisit Jan. 6 as a thinly veiled attempt to rewrite history in Trump’s favor. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach Trump immediately after the Capitol riot, though just two — Reps. David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington — remain in Congress.

“I know it’s another desperate and laughable ploy by Trump to change the subject from the Epstein File, which the whole country will keep demanding until it’s released in full,” said House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former member of the Jan. 6 select committee, in a statement.

“But I confess that I’m delighted to hear our Republicans colleagues are going to carry out another self-inflicted political wound by creating a nationwide televised opportunity to review their ongoing complicity with, and apologetics for, violent insurrection and Donald Trump’s sinister attempt to overthrow a presidential election,” Raskin added.

Picking up where they left off

Loudermilk led a subpanel of the House Administration Committee last Congress that probed events around that day. He shepherded the release of security footage and took aim at the select committee, which referred Trump for criminal prosecution and investigated Loudermilk for leading a tour of the complex on Jan. 5, 2021. Capitol Police later said there was no evidence of suspicious activity during the visit, a point Loudermilk drove home in 2023 in his first release of Jan. 6-related documents.

In his final report of the 118th Congress, Loudermilk suggested the select committee’s Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming Republican, should be investigated by the FBI.

Cheney, in a statement at the time, called the report “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.” Loudermilk said this week he conducted his investigation in “a fully unbiased manner.”

Loudermilk had initially called for a full select committee to continue his work, and earlier this Congress was stuck in negotiations with the speaker’s office over the jurisdiction of the panel he would lead.

“It was my understanding it was going to be a full select committee. Somehow that changed to a select subcommittee under Judiciary,” Loudermilk said in May. “As I’ve told them, why do it?”

But more recently Loudermilk’s position softened, and earlier this month he said an agreement had been reached in principle on the select subcommittee, which he’ll lead under the auspices of Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

“The partisan January 6 Committee failed to uncover crucial pieces of information for the American people,” Jordan said in a statement, calling Loudermilk a leader who “will continue to work tirelessly to get everyone the truth.”

This week, Loudermilk said the select subcommittee would largely pick up where he left off, taking a closer look at the FBI’s confidential human sources who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as communication breakdowns that may have contributed to the attack.

“My focus at this point is more going to be, where was the failure and how can we fix it going forward?” he said. “Was it incompetence? Were some people making political decisions? We need to look deeper into those things.”

The speaker and Loudermilk have not yet released a roster for the proposed select subcommittee.

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