House members voted largely along party lines Wednesday to formally establish a new panel to investigate the events around the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
It’s the latest chapter in the Republican effort to rewrite the history of the events at the Capitol on that day, when a violent mob stormed the building as lawmakers attempted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
House Democrats ran their own Jan. 6 committee when they held the majority, where they held public hearings and released a report detailing Trump’s efforts to circumvent the election results and his failure to stop his supporters from taking over the complex.
This new, GOP-led select subcommittee will fall under the purview of the House Judiciary Committee and be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who will, in his new role, have unilateral authority to issue subpoenas. He plans to use his gavel to review security and intelligence failures around the attacks; many GOP lawmakers have blamed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for allowing the Capitol to be breached in the first place and have in general downplayed the significance of the event.
Loudermilk will preside over a group of eight lawmakers to be appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will be able to consult on at most three of those members. In an interview, Loudermilk said he was sending Johnson his picks, and while the list had not yet been finalized, he pointed to Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) as a potential selection.
Nehls is a former sheriff who helped Capitol Police stave off rioters who tried break onto the House floor during the siege. Then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had initially made Nehls one of his picks to sit on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee, but withdrew GOP participation after Pelosi refused to seat his other selections, including the current Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
Asked how the previous Jan. 6 committee will inform the new panel’s work, Loudermilk said the goal was to create a report that more accurately reflected the events at the Capitol that day.
“The evidence is irrefutable that there was more politics than there was truth in that,” he said of the previous panel’s findings. “What we saw in the initial investigation, there was a lot more politics involved in decision-making than there ever should’ve been.”
Loudermilk will be required to produce a final report of the subcommittee’s finding by the end of 2026.
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