opinion
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized “political operatives” on the January 6 Select Committee and called their investigation a “scam” after reports that the committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files.
Sources close to the House Administration Committee's Oversight Subcommittee's investigation into security failures related to the Capitol riot as well as the Select Committee's “actions” in they The committee “is required to turn over all documents” to the incoming Republican majority, the investigation told Fox News.
The new House committee, chaired by Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), had previously discovered that it had received only about 2.5 terabytes of data despite Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mich.) saying in a letter that his group It turned into over 4TB of data.
According to the report, Loudermilk has hired a digital forensics team to try to identify data that was not turned over. The team discovered that “117 files had been deleted and encrypted” just days before the new Republican Party majority took power.
RELATED: Trump accuses January 6 committee of 'egregious criminal act' after GOP accuses them of destroying documents
The January 6 Committee deleted the encrypted files, but…
While the January 6 Commission raised suspicions by deleting encrypted files just days before Republicans were able to access them, there is little hope that the data can be recovered.
According to Fox, “the forensic team recovered all 117 deleted and encrypted files.”
Loudermilk is now demanding passwords to the files, writing in a letter to Thompson that the Democrat “claimed” to have “handed over 4 terabytes of digital files” but that “the hard drives the select committee archived with the House clerk contained a smaller amount of digital files.” More than 3 terabytes of data.”
“One of the recovered files revealed the identity of an individual whose testimony had not been preserved by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk wrote. “Furthermore, we found that most of the recovered files are password protected, preventing us from determining what they contain.”
Loudermilk asked Thompson to provide “a password list for all password-protected files created by the select committee.”
The report also notes that the committee failed to hand over “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of witness testimony.
RELATED: Even former Capitol Police Officer Michael Vanone is embarrassed when MSNBC host starts crying on Jan. 6
Trump responds
Former President Donald Trump responded to the Fox News report, first sharing it on his social media platform Truth and then leveling the Jan. 6 select committee in his own comments.
“The entire committee of political operatives, thugs and misfits was a scam created to hurt and defeat your favorite president, Donald J. Trump,” he asserted.
He added: “They deleted and destroyed almost everything, because it completely exonerated me, and it was very bad for crazy Nancy Pelosi and other fascists and communists.”
In another post, Trump lamented “political scams” that are “designed to high-level election interference.”
Information from the select committee would not only be preserved but would also be “available to the public,” Thompson told reporters in December 2022, one month before the GOP took control of the House.
Then, according to this report, they instead encrypted and deleted more than 100 files. What are they trying to hide from Republicans and the American people? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
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