GOP rep says J6 Committee failed to preserve witness depositions

In a Thursday evening interview, Rep. Barry Loudermilk revealed that videotapes of witness interviews conducted by the Democrat-led January 6 committee have disappeared.

"All of the videotapes of all depositions are gone," Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration oversight committee, told John Solomon.

"We found out about this early in the investigation when I received the call from someone who was looking for some information on one of the videotapes, and we started searching and we had none."

Loudermilk said he wrote a letter to Bennie Thompson, chair of the former January 6 committee, "and he confirmed that they did not preserve those tapes. He didn’t feel that they had to, but according to House rules, you have to preserve any data and information and documents that are used in an official proceeding."

Loudermilk explained that portions of these tapes were shown on the committee’s televised hearings, "which means they had to keep those but yet he chose not to."

The lawmaker said he believes the tapes "exist somewhere, we’ve just got to find where all these videos are."

"Here’s why it’s so important: even with Cassidy Hutchinson, people have asked why do you need the videos, you’ve got written transcripts. Well, when you got someone like Cassidy who is significantly changing her testimony, I want to see what her body language is when she gave her original testimony. I want to see what her voice inflection is. Was she very confident in what she was saying at that time but then later decided to change it? This is why it’s so important that we have those videotapes and I believe that’s probably why we don’t have them."

This comes as Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia denied a motion from Donald Trump’s team to subpoena records they said were missing from the archived records of the January 6 Select Committee. These are records that were reportedly not turned over after the investigation was complete.

Trump’s team, in an October 11 filing, requested permission to issue subpoenas to people including Thompson and Loudermilk about the missing records.

"According to a letter from Representative Barry Loudermilk, Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight, however, the Select Committee did not transfer or archive numerous records (collectively the 'Missing Records')," the October filing states.

The October filing cites video recordings of transcribed interviews and depositions that had been featured in the Select Committee’s hearings that were not archived or transferred to the Committee on House Administration.