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--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, and welcome to an extra edition of Morning Wire. I'm John Bickley, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, and I'm here with my co-host Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Good morning, John. Today, we're discussing the January 6th committee and their investigation into the events surrounding that day. Joining us now is the Republican who's in charge of auditing that committee's findings. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Thank you for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: Congressman, let's start with your goal in auditing the select committee's investigation into J6. Why is your investigation necessary?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Well, twofold. One is the January 6th committee failed to do what part of their task was, which was determining where was the security failure at the Capitol. I don't care who was coming to the Capitol. There was no way anyone should be able to breach the security of the Capitol, especially when the Capitol was officially closed due to COVID. And it wasn't even open to the public. And that was one of the key aspects of what the select committee was supposed to be doing. Not only did they not report on any of that, there's no documentation. So how can you fix a problem if you didn't even identify where it is?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great point, Congressman. So, what's the other aspect of your investigation?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: The other aspect of it is the conduct of the January 6th committee itself. Basically all they did after spending 18 and a half million dollars was come out with a manifesto against Trump trying to tie Donald Trump to the attack on the Capitol. And that was their narrative, and everything that they did appears to be to just come up with that narrative. So we need to get to the truth of what really happened and look into the conduct of the January 6th committee. Why did they not look at the security failures of January 6th? And we know that part of what they reported is false.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's really interesting. You mentioned that part of what they reported is false. Can you tell us more about that?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Well, they falsely accused me of giving reconnaissance to the rioters. Which we have found out now through our investigation and looking at the evidence. Not only did they know a month in advance that that accusation was false, the Capitol Police had said it was false. We know that internally within the committee itself, the recommendation was to not go forward with this because there was no evidence, but they decided to make that accusation anyhow. And in their final report, they reported as if we actually gave tours of the Capitol, which was false.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Wow, that's really shocking. Now, on the J6 committee, it was the blue team that was supposed to research Capitol security. So, what did happen to their research? That's the question because that's a set of documents that we don't have.
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Now, our question is, did these documents ever exist? And the reason we're asking that question, if you're going to investigate U.S. Capitol Police and you're going to investigate a security failure, you also have to investigate the political oversight of the Capitol Police. Now, from the House side, there's two entities that have that oversight, the Speaker's Office and the House Administration Committee. Now, the chair of the House Administration Committee, Zoe Loughran, was actually on the January 6th committee, which is a huge conflict of interest. So it now causes us to question, was the blue team actually shut down and not allowed to investigate at all?
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a great point, Congressman. You corresponded with Democrat Benny Thompson, the J6 committee chair, about these missing records. What did he tell you about them?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: He actually admitted that they just decided not to keep some records. And he's trying to justify that they weren't important to the report. But one thing is, there are certain records we don't know whether we have them or not. But we do know that there are certain records that we don't have, like the blue team. It could be that they never generated any records. I think there is something there. It's more than likely that the team found something that somebody didn't want them to find out, so they suppressed the records.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's really concerning. You also mentioned that there were videotapes of depositions and interviews. Those videotapes were actually used in some of the televised hearings. So we know those exist. And also, we came across some letters that were not turned over to us, but we found them from other sources where Benny Thompson was writing a letter to the White House and Department of Homeland Security, where he was explaining that they were returning records to them when they clearly were supposed to keep those.
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: And so we know those are missing. I wrote Benny Thompson and I brought these instances up and we asked for his assistance in finding those records. Basically, his response was that they determined what records they were going to keep and what records they didn't, and they just didn't keep some records.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Wow. Do you believe you're going to get the records from the White House and DHS, and what will you be looking for in them if you do?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Well, first of all, I've already written letters to the Department of Homeland Security and the White House asking for any documents that they provided the select committee on January 6th. We don't know exactly what to ask for because the letter that we found has been heavily redacted, especially the letter to the White House, and it redacts the itemization of the records that they were returning. So, a little over a week ago, we sent a letter to the White House and Department of Homeland Security and asked them to promptly respond to us with the documents every document that they provided. So we're waiting to hear back from the White House at this point.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Final question, Congressman. What is the most shocking detail or revelation you uncovered so far going through this evidence?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Well, to me, after 18 and a half million dollars that was spent trying to figure out number one task was how do we secure the capital? They did nothing with that. But from the evidence that we've been reviewing, I take this investigation from the approach of, hey, we take a theory or we take something that somebody is claiming that happened and we try to prove it false. If you try to prove it true, you'll do it every time. But if you try to prove it false and you can't, then you've found the truth. And so probably the most shocking is that we have verified that there were some plainclothes law enforcement officers who were not Capitol Police who were encouraging people to go into the Capitol. We do have videos of other similar type activities that we're in process of trying to verify whether or not they were law enforcement officers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's really concerning. And what's important about that is metropolitan police, law enforcement from the executive branch are not allowed to be on Capitol grounds unless they are specifically asked to be there or there's a pre-existing agreement that is enacted. And we do know that there were law enforcement agencies that were non-Capital police that were on Capitol grounds before any of the agreements were enacted, nor were they invited. So basically, they were already on Capitol grounds in violation of our law. So we need to find out why were they there at that point and what were they doing?
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Well, let's hope we get some answers.
--:-- John Bickley: Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Barry Loudermilk: Thanks a lot.
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