GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia revealed that House Speaker Mike Johnson promised him that his investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol will be “formalized as a new committee.”
This is part of a larger plan by Republicans to keep going with a number of investigations they started in the last Congress, now that they control both houses of Congress and the White House.
Loudermilk told CNN that the new committee’s details are still being worked out, but one option is to make it so that Johnson has more say over who is put on the panel (called a “select committee”) and how it works.
Making a new committee to highlight Loudermilk’s work, which included a report suggesting that former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney be charged by the FBI, keeps the Republican campaign to keep President-elect Donald Trump from being held responsible for the violence on January 6 in the spotlight.
“It was so singularly focused that basically Trump created this entire problem,” Loudermilk said of the former January 6 select committee that Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney helped lead. “When in reality, it was a multitude of failures at different levels.”
Johnson has publicly stated that the new effort to investigate January 6 will be “fully funded.”
“Continuing its investigation into the previous January 6 select committee – which featured Cheney as a vice chair and had another Republican member – and broader security response to the Capitol attack is not the only way Republicans plan to use their new majority to carry over their previous investigations that remain politically charged,” CNN reported.
“Republicans re-issued subpoenas related to special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents and two Justice Department tax investigators who worked on the Hunter Biden case on Monday, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Those subpoenas would renew pursuits by the previous Congress that have been fought over in court – and not resolved – for months,” the outlet added.
California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff spoke this week about the Jan. 6 committee and reports that President Joe Biden was considering a pardon for him, Cheney, and others.
Schiff said Monday that he doesn’t want Biden to set a “precedent” by issuing a preemptive pardon to himself and others related to the work they did on the House Jan. 6 committee.
“It would be the wrong precedent to set. I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons,” Schiff said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
Pressed on the potential for a more targeted pardon, Schiff responded, “Well, and here I’m just speaking for myself, those of us that were on the Jan. 6 committee who [President-elect Trump] has put in the crosshairs, we’re all enormously proud of the work that we did.”
“We stand by it. We feel we have the protection of the Speech and Debate Clause. So, I — my own feeling is, let’s just avoid this kinda broad precedent,” he added.
Schiff stopped short of saying he would say “no” to such a pardon if offered, saying of Biden, “I’m urging that he not go down that road.”
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Some Democrats have said that before Biden leaves office at the end of the month, he should pardon people who Trump and his administration might target.
“We’re back in this conundrum again, where a Democratic president can do things for a very good reason, a laudable reason, a legitimate reason — in this case, that people are being threatened improperly by an incoming president — but then that precedent can be abused,” Schiff said in his Monday CNN appearance.