House Republicans have discovered that just DAYS before Republicans took control of the House in 2023, the Democrat-run Select January 6th Committee deleted over a terabyte of data from its records. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who leads the committee reviewing the previous committee’s investigation, joins Glenn to discuss what the Republicans are doing next. Many of the files, he explains, are still password protected. But he details what was in some of the unlocked files that had been deleted: “[These] were critical to the investigation.” But is anything going to come of this, Glenn asks? Will anyone be arrested or subpoenaed for what may be an illegal attempt to hide the facts from the American people?
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: We have representative Barry Loudermilk.
There's a story we have been trying to get to this week.
And we just kept putting it off. Putting it off.
And I was going to have it next hour. I was going to try to do it hour three, of the podcast. But I have Kari Lake on in half an hour. So stand by for that.
But Barry has been looking into the January 6th committee, and the deleted files that contain critical information. They deleted them before the G.O.P. was able to access them.
Now, they have recovered them. But we're looking for the password.
And the password is: Never.
Barry Loudermilk is with us now.
Congressman, how are you?
BARRY: Good, Glenn.
It's good to be with you again. Hey, we haven't tried the password never. It could work.
GLENN: Could do hate Trump.
Could do scam.
I mean, I could go all day on those.
Barry, what is the significance of these files?
BARRY: Well, that is what we don't know. All -- we know at this point, is they were recovered from what -- a series of hard drives, that were given to us. That were the hard drives of the computers on the select committee of January 6. At one point, in my communications with Benny Thompson who was the chairman of the select committee, regarding videos that he omitted that they must keep.
That were critical to the investigation. And these were the videos of the depositions, which even Liz Cheney, in her recent book says was so important that we videotaped. So the American people could see the truth.
But they decided not to preserve those. We were communicating with them about that, as well as documents that he sent to the White House, in DHS, instead of keeping them and giving them to us.
In his response to me, as to what happened to these documents. Why didn't he keep them.
He mentioned that they handed over four terabytes of digital data to us.
The problem is, we only had less than three terabytes of digital data. So when we found out, that these videotapes were missing, that we searched for those. They didn't exist. He admitted to not keeping those.
I don't know where those are. We're still trying to find those.
GLENN: You know, can somebody check?
I'm pretty sure the NSA has a really big storage cloud in Utah. Can we maybe knock on the door and say, hey, are you a lending library? Can we see some stuff?
BARRY: That is a possibility there. We've even gone to the House recording studio, who is when you normally do a deposition, and you have it recorded, video recorded. You just call the House studio. This is what they do. They bring the equipment. They record it.
And they keep it. And they make it available to you. And when they're ready to archive it, you get it from them. What the Select Committee did was different. Because when Bennie Thompson told us, he didn't keep any of these, we just went to the recording studio. And said, can you give us copies of them?
And they said, well, we didn't have any. Because they didn't allow us to have any.
In fact, they only borrowed our equipment.
They wouldn't even use our people to do the recording.
So that sounded to me like, wow. This was planned from the beginning.
So we hired. Trying to figure out where these one-plus terabytes of data were, we hired independent, outside computer forensics company, to take those hard drives. And do a low-level scan of them.
And as you would expect, a hard drive that someone uses. You will find some deleted files.
Now, you see files that were deleted early on in an investigation.
You know, it's doing work.
You delete duplicates.
You get rid of it.
What highlighted to us. Were files.
Particularly, some that were deleted.
That they recovered.
That were deleted literally just days or hours before the Republicans took control.
One of those documents that was not password encrypted for some reason.
It was found in the recycle bin.
Was related to the depositions that were sent to the White House.
So there's a deleted file, that was deleted on January -- or January 1st, 2 days before the Republicans took control.
Related to documents that we know that they had, that they sent away. And we didn't have access to.
There were also 117, I believe, the number of documents, that were password-protected and encrypted, that we had seen the file names. We can see what type of file it is. And those names don't match anything that we already have.
So they are unique documents, that I believe we haven't seen before. But we can't get into.
So how critical they are?
We don't know. I just want someone to give me the password.
GLENN: Don't we have people that do that?
I've seen it in movies and stuff. You put a little box over the password.
Like password is cake.
All right. So, anyway, that's my password, by the way.
I'm going to change it now.
We're talking to chairman Barry Loudermilk from Georgia.
The conservative Republican from Georgia.
Is any of this illegal?
I mean, aren't you supposed to preserve documents?
I know if this happened. And Congress wanted information, that was on my computer. And I just went whoops, I deleted it all.
I think my butt would be in a chair in front of you guys. And I would be in trouble.
Wouldn't I?
BARRY: You could be. Yes.
Because if you deleted it, at a point, when you knew that Congress was looking for it.
Or you know the courts were looking for it.
Yes. You're free to delete anything you want today.
Once you know --
GLENN: And they did know.
BARRY: And they did know. We sent them letters of preservation.
The clerk's office has rules regarding what should be preserved. And video depositions are a part of that.
GLENN: So why is nothing happening.
BARRY: Well, we -- we got to know exactly the extent of where things are.
And my number one priority is getting the document, so we can -- you know, not only the passwords for these documents.
But getting the documents from the White House, and Homeland Security, that they have.
And so we are -- for lack of a better term, working with the White House right now.
The four depositions, they have, that are -- these are House documents. They are not executive branch. These are documents owned by the House of Representatives.
They are White House employees who testified before the committee. And the chairman sent those to the White House.
We had requested them. They didn't respond. Requested them again. They responded and said, okay. We'll send them to you once we redact them. So we sent them four documents, so heavily recontacted. It was literally pages of --
GLENN: Look, Barry. What do you think of this. Let me just offer.
I can get on the air now. I can probably find somebody that goes by the name of like, you know, one eye. And he can have that thing, hacked open, you know, pretty quickly.
And we would do it in the Capitol. You know, under supervision and stuff.
But I think we can get that done.
I cannot believe with the power and the might of the United States of America, we can't open up those files.
Hmm.
BARRY: We're going to be looking at. We've contacted some different terms, if you will. That have technology, to try to get into -- some of them say, with the new encryption standards.
They may not be able to. But we're looking at doing that.
In the meantime, we're just trying to find somebody that has the passwords.
I asked Benny Thompson for them. Just a simple letter. Saying, we found those documents.
Not making an accusation there.
We just -- they're encrypted. Don't know why you encrypted them.
We need the password.
He responded with a three-page letter. I think he used ultra MAGA in it. A year or ten times.
Making all kinds of accusations. I have no idea what you're talking about.
GLENN: Yeah. Seems like obstruction.
BARRY: Which could be the case. It could be that he doesn't bank what the committee did for two years.
Sometimes, he knows what those password are.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.
Talking to Representative Barry Loudermilk about January 6. There's one other thing I want to hit quickly.
This whole pipe bomb story is falling apart quickly. I mean, all of the January 6th narrative. Is falling apart. Any update on the pipe bomb thing. I mean, this week, we -- we saw the video of an undercover Capitol Police man, who is supposedly, just a passerby at the beginning. Now we find out, it's Capitol Police. He spots it. Then goes over to the Secret Service.
They finish their sandwiches. Let kids walk by it.
Before they get out of their car. And -- and, you know, then send the robot out to disarm it. What the hell is going on with this?
BARRY: That's a good question. We've been working with Representative Thomas Massie in Kentucky. This is something he wanted to take on, as a member of the Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Committee.
So we've been working closely with him, pulling video records. Doing some investigative work ourselves.
And, you know, we released in the last -- couple of weeks. It was an undercover Capitol Police officer.
Even before we knew that. We had video of the person, who placed the pipe bomb.
You can watch him place it. The night before, and it was obvious, that he was putting it in a place, to be found.
GLENN: Yes.
BARRY: The Secret Service has the vice president elect, Kamala Harris, at that building. They were there, sitting literally feet away from this pipe bomb, and never saw it. I mean, they're supposed to be doing sweeps of the building, before you bring somebody there. And that pipe bomb had sat there from the night before.
GLENN: If you look at the pipe bomb.
If you look at the pipe bomb. It was like designed we mega mind. I mean, it's so clear.
It's got the kitchen timer on it. It is so clear, that it was meant to be found, and that it's a pipe bomb, that my dog would have sniffed it out.
How did they miss it?
Except, they did find it. Twenty minutes before the vote was supposed to go down on Capitol Hill. Wow! And that's where the timer was stopped. It stopped at 20 minutes.
Before the hour, or whatever.
Wow, what a coincidence that is!
And why is it that Kamala Harris, we didn't even know where she was? And anything about this, for a year.
And how is it that this is the greatest scandal and the darkest day in American history, and yet, the people that would gain the most, from saying, there were two pipe bombs. They planned on blowing up buildings.
Haven't said a word about it.
Why?
BARRY: And the FBI pulls resources from the investigation, and moves them over to helping prosecute the people that were there on January 6th.
It seems to me, a lone pipe bomber would be more dangerous, that's still out there. Than people who have already, you know -- even if they did something wrong, which there were people that did.
GLENN: Yes, I agree.
BARRY: But there are other people, that they're spending an awful lot of resources, what should be misdemeanor charges. That you'll pull resources from investigating a pipe bomb, to go after these folks.
Then there's the issue of the gallows. You know, the infamous gallows, that Biden is using in his campaign right now.
GLENN: Yeah.
And they were -- they were built the night before, in front of the police!
BARRY: 6 o'clock in the morning.
Why didn't someone tear that down?
I mean, with all the security, with all the police, with US park police.
The FBI, Metropolitan Police, the US Capitol Police, in droves. All around that area. That morning.
GLENN: And we have it all on tape.
Yeah. And we have it all on tape. And we can't find the guys that built it, can we?
BARRY: Well, the FBI sure hasn't.
GLENN: Yeah, that's weird.
BARRY: Independent investigative reporter, that's doing tremendous work.
Much like Steve Baker has been doing this. Has been working on this, and he has more leads than the FBI did.
GLENN: Yeah, that's weird.
BARRY: Let me tell you, Steve has done a tremendous job.
We've spent a lot of time with him. Of course, he's been in our office, looking at videos.
He's doing a great service to the American people, by exposing some in-depth corruption. Our prayers are with him, and our support is with him as well.
GLENN: Thank you. I will say, everybody at the Blaze. And I ask the audience to do the same.
Pray for him. Because we're expecting him to be arrested any day, and we don't even know the charges. And they won't tell him the charges. And all he did was investigate.
He was there just as a reporter, investigating.
And now that he's exposing things, all of a sudden, oh, they -- they're going to file charges.
So any day. Thank you so much for your help on that and everything else. I appreciate it. God bless.
BARRY: Well, the American people deserve to know the truth.
GLENN: They sure do. Congressman Barry Loudermilk from the great state of Georgia.
