Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked Committee on January 6 deleted some 117 files containing “critical information” before Republicans took control of the chamber in January 2026, according to a new report.
The House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, responsible for investigating both the 2021 Capitol riot and the prior Democrat-led inquiry into the riot, discovered that during the House’s transition to GOP control in 2023, over 100 files were encrypted and deleted from hard drives, the New York Post reported.
The select committee was expected to provide Republican Chairman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia with four terabytes of archived data. The outlet, however, reported that his committee only received two terabytes of data.
Fox News added: “Loudermilk, last week, told Fox News Digital his investigation has entered a ‘new phase’ with renewed support from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has committed additional resources to the panel’s investigation. Sources familiar with Loudermilk’s investigation told Fox News Digital that, per House rules, the former select committee, which was chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., was required to turn over all documents from its investigation to the new, GOP-led panel, after Republicans secured the majority of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections.”
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Fox reported that the digital forensics firm hired by Loudermilk’s committee discovered 117 were both deleted and encrypted on Jan. 1, 2023, just a few days before Republicans took over the committee and Thompson’s team was required to hand over all materials.
Fox also obtained a letter Loudermilk sent to Thompson seeking access to the recovered digital files.
“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. “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.”
Loudermilk noted further that the Mississippi Democrat also “claimed that you turned over 4-terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3-terabytes of data.”
He further explained that following the forensic analysis of the hard drives and data they contained, he 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 wrote. “Further, we found that most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain.”
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He asked that Thompson provide the committee with “a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the Select Committee” so that his committee can “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.”
Loudermilk also wrote letters to the White House general counsel and the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, asking for “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of the testimony provided to the former select committee.
Loudermilk’s committee is aware of the existence of these interview transcripts, but they claim that the Thompson-led committee did not hand them over.
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He also demanded that the White House and DHS comply by Jan. 24.
“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,” Loudermilk told Fox News Digital.
“The American people deserve to know the full truth, and Speaker Johnson has empowered me to use all tools necessary to recover these documents to get the truth, and I will.”
