A digital forensics team has made a big discovery on Capitol Hill.
The House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, with the help of a digital forensics team, is in the process of recovering 117 encrypted files that were deleted by the January 6th Committee just days before Republicans gained the majority.
Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, who sits on the subcommittee, has confirmed the files were deleted but stated the content of the files at this time is unknown.
House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk shared, “It’s obvious that Pelosi’s Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation.”
BREAKING: Pelosi's Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files days before GOP took majority: sources https://t.co/ZXljvLwqJK #FoxNews
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 22, 2024
BREAKING: House Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files just days before GOP took majority, Fox News reports pic.twitter.com/U2xjScQHTm
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) January 22, 2024
Here’s what Just The News reported:
Forensic investigators hired by a Republican-led committee recovered more than 100 encrypted files that the Democratic-led House Jan. 6 Select Committee deleted days before the GOP took over the House majority, according to a new report released Monday.
House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sent a letter to former Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., demanding he provide answers and passwords for the data, which was deleted against House rules, according to Fox News Digital.
The Oversight Subcommittee, which is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the former select committee, should have received four terabytes of archived data from the select committee after Republicans entered the majority in January 2023, but it obtained less than three terabytes of data.
The subcommittee hired a digital forensics team to determine what information was not handed over, and the team discovered 117 files that were encrypted and deleted on Jan. 1, 2023, two days before Republicans were sworn into the majority, according to the report.
Loudermilk said in his letter to Thompson that the Mississippi Democrat acknowledged over the summer that the select committee “did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules” and had “sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”
House Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files days before GOP took majority: sources https://t.co/lmPJgaotVP pic.twitter.com/bjred0Z2Rp
— New York Post (@nypost) January 22, 2024
Here’s what The New York Post reported:
A House subcommittee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot is trying to recover 117 encrypted files that the now-disbanded House Select Jan. 6 Committee deleted before Republicans took the majority last year.
A digital forensics team employed by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight discovered the data deletion occurred on Jan. 1, 2023, and were able to recover the password-protected files. The find was first reported by Fox News.
“Yes, these reports are accurate,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who sits on the subcommittee, confirmed to The Post. “Unfortunately, at this time, we cannot determine what was in the deleted files.”
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), has since written to former House Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) requesting passwords to access the data, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Fox News.
Thompson “claimed” to have “turned over 4-terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3- terabytes of data,” Loudermilk wrote.
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