One House Republican leader has officially accused the January 6 Committee of intentionally and knowingly spreading a series of entirely false allegations about him taking part in a “reconnaissance tour” just one day prior to the events of the 2021 U.S. Capitol breach.
The direct target of these committee allegations, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), spoke out this week to show the initial findings of his recent inquiry that looked into the entire January 6 panel in his capacity of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight chairman.
“As the subcommittee continues to go through over 2 million documents provided by the January 6th Select Committee, our initial review has found that their work was solely focused on pushing a pre-determined narrative and they selectively chose ‘facts’ to fit that narrative,” exclaimed Loudermilk in a Tuesday statement.
“I was the target of one of those narratives, when they accused me of giving a ‘reconnaissance tour,'” he stated. “We’ve uncovered documents that prove the committee knew that the allegation that I gave a ‘reconnaissance tour’ was verifiably false, yet continued to make public accusations and ultimately printed that lie in their final report.”
At the nexus of these allegations was found to be a group of people that included a number of children and adults that Loudermilk paid a visit to as they were given a tour of the office buildings of the U.S. Capitol complex on the 5th of January, 2021. Just a day later on the 6th, a storm of people rushed and breached the Capitol building with the intent to disrupt the legislators that were present and trying to certify the 2020 election victory of President Joe Biden.
Loudermilk seemingly caught the eye of the now-defunct January 6 Committee for being one of the dozen or so Republican legislators that voted to stand in favor of allowing Electoral College objections regarding concerns of fraud and other issues. Just one week after the events of January 6, accusations of a “reconnaissance tour” started up and spread throughout Democrats, expressed Loudermilk in a timeline summary paper.
In the wake of looking over the day’s security footage, the U.S. Capitol Police explained in a June 2022 letter that “there is no evidence” that Loudermilk went into the U.S. Capitol building with any group on January 5th. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious,” exclaimed Tom Manger, the Capitol Police Chief.
Despite these claims from law enforcement, Loudermilk stated that the January 6 Committee went on to release another letter sporting “selectively edited ‘evidence'” about the tour.
The congressman quickly pointed out the final report from the Committee, which is faulted in the timeline document for “repeating false claim of Loudermilk giving ‘a tour of the Capitol.'” The final report, made public in December, also speaks about a tour participant that chose to attend the rally held by former President Donald Trump on the 6th on the Ellipse. But this person, named Trevor Hallgren, explained to the committee that he only ever got between 100-300 yards of the building on the 6th and he has not been issued any charges in relation to that day’s events.
In conclusion, Loudermilk stated, “It’s clear their work isn’t credible, and they owe every individual whose reputation they attempted to smear an apology.”
