House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) said Wednesday that he may refer members of the January 6 Committee to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for hiding and destroying documents.
Loudermilk has been investigating the work of the January 6 Committee, and discovered last year that the Committee had destroyed documents and other records, despite being warned by then-incoming Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to preserve all of the evidence it had collected in months of investigations and closed-door testimony.
He told John Solomon of JusttheNews.com that it was possible members of the committee could face prosecution:
The House Republican leading the current review of security and intelligence failures during the 2021 Capitol riot put former lawmakers and staff on the now-defunct Democrat-run Jan. 6 committee on notice Wednesday that he may make referrals for criminal obstruction or House ethics violations.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga,, the chairman of the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee, told Just the News he is frustrated that videotapes of interviews, transcripts and other evidence that Congress gathered under the prior Jan. 6 inquiry run by Democrats was deleted, destroyed, moved to other federal agencies or locked behind passwords that have not been recovered, and he believes some form of accountability is warranted.
“As far as holding people accountable, yes, they should be,” Loudermilk said during an interview with Just the News, No Noise television show. “But I think that’s going to be a little ways down the road, because there is so much more information that we need to get. And we need to build not only this, to get the truth out to the American people, but see just how big this case potentially is for obstructing.”
Loudermilk said that censure or ethical sanctions could also be applied instead of prosecution, given the immunity that members of Congress often enjoy regarding their work due to the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.