A recent report reveals that prior to Republicans assuming control of the chamber in January 2022, the Committee on January 6, which was specifically chosen by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, deliberately erased approximately 117 files that contained significant and essential information.

According to the New York Post, the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee, currently conducting investigations into the 2021 Capitol riot and the previous Democrat-led inquiry, has discovered that over 100 files were encrypted and purged from hard drives during the House’s transition to GOP control in 2023.

The select committee was expected to provide Republican Chairman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia with four terabytes of archived data. However, the committee only received two terabytes of data, as reported by the outlet.

According to sources familiar with their investigation, a committee hired by Loudermilk discovered that a total of 117 files were deleted on January 1, 2023. These deletions occurred just days before the transition of power following the midterm elections. In light of this, Loudermilk has written a letter to Democratic Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson, the former chair of the disbanded committee on the Capitol riot. In the letter, Loudermilk requests access to the encrypted files.

“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.”

Loudermilk made a point of mentioning that the majority of the files that were recovered needed a password in order to be accessed. He then asked Thompson to provide him with a comprehensive list of passwords for all the password-protected files that were created by the Select Committee. This was so that his committee could access these files and ensure that they were properly archived. This information was reported by the outlet.

In addition to this, Loudermilk also made a request to the White House general counsel and the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He asked them to provide the former select committee with unedited and unredacted transcripts of the testimony that was given at the White House and DHS. The outlet reported that the chairman set a deadline of January 24th for the White House and DHS to comply with this request.