Former Dem-led January 6 committee deleted encrypted files containing 'critical information' before GOP takeover: Report

The former Democratic-led House Select Committee on January 6 allegedly deleted password-protected files that contained "critical information" just days before Republicans seized the majority in the House of Representatives, Fox News Digital reported Monday.

Sources familiar with the situation told the news outlet that the former select committee, led by Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, was required to provide all documents from its investigation into the events at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to the new Republican-led committee following the 2022 midterm elections.

According to the sources, Thompson told the House Administration Committee's Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) that the former panel would provide more than four terabytes of archived data. However, the new Republican committee reportedly received less than three terabytes.

Loudermilk's panel is investigating the security failures of January 6 and "actions" taken by the former committee. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) plans to invest more resources in the investigation, Loudermilk told Fox News Digital last week.

As part of the panel's investigation, it hired a digital forensics team to determine what information was deleted, according to the sources. The team reportedly found that the Democratic-led committee erased 117 encrypted files days before it was required to turn over the data to the new panel, sources told Fox News Digital.

"As you acknowledged in your July 7, 2023 letter, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Select Committee) did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules," Loudermilk wrote to Thompson in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital. "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."

According to the letter, the forensic team was able to recover "numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee."

"One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee," Loudermilk continued.

He stated that the panel cannot access many of the recovered files because they are password-protected. Loudermilk demanded Thompson turn over "a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the Select Committee" so that the data could be archived appropriately.

Additionally, the Republican-led committee reportedly did not receive White House and Department of Homeland Security testimony from the former committee. In a separate letter to the White House general counsel, Loudermilk requested the "unedited and unredacted transcripts" by January 24.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Loudermilk said, "It's obvious that Pelosi's Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation. It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules."

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