WASHINGTON — Leaders of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Thursday asked a Republican congressman to submit to questioning over a tour of the complex he gave the day before the riots, saying that they were investigating whether rioters had led reconnaissance of the building before the rampage.
In a letter dated Thursday to Representative Barry Loudermilk, the panel’s top two members said investigators had obtained evidence that the Georgian Republican toured parts of the Capitol complex on Jan. 5, 2021, when it was closed to visitors due to pandemic restrictions. Mr Loudermilk has denied leading an “exploration tour”.
“Public coverage and testimony indicate that some individuals and groups are making efforts to collect information about the layout of the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings by Jan. 6, 2021,” said a letter to Mr. Loudermilk from Representative Bennie Thompson. , Mississippi Democrat and the panel chair, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican from Wyoming and the vice chair.
They did not directly claim that someone escorted by Mr. Loudermilk later attacked the Capitol. But they suggested they obtained evidence that he had guided visitors through the complex, writing that their assessment of the evidence “directly contradicts” Republicans’ denials that closed-circuit CCTV footage showed no such tours had taken place.
In a statement, Mr. Loudermilk admitted to taking voters to parts of the Capitol the day before the riots, but said the visit had been innocent.
“A family with young children meeting a congressman in the House office buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance.’ The family never entered the Capitol,” wrote Mr. Loudermilk in a joint statement with Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, the Supreme Republican on the House Administration Committee, adding, “The family did not enter the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, and no one in that family has been investigated or charged in connection with Jan. 6.”
The statement did not state whether Mr Loudermilk would agree to meet with the panel to discuss the matter.
Loudermilk, who is the official count of electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021, and repeatedly argued criticized the committee investigation into the riots, is the seventh Republican member of Congress the panel has asked to interview to date.
To date, none of the Republican lawmakers agree. The commission has subpoenaed five of them, including minority leader Kevin McCarthy, California Representative, to try to force their cooperation.
In the immediate aftermath of the riots, Democrats raised the question of whether some Republican members of Congress had defied pandemic restrictions and given tours of the Capitol before the attack so visitors could study the complex’s layout before the violent storm. eruption.
More than 30 Democrats joined New Jersey Representative Mikie Sherrill in calling for an investigation by top Capitol security officials and the Capitol Police Department into what Ms. Sherrill called “suspicious behavior” and access that the day before the riots to visitors to the Capitol complex.
Ms. Sherrill said she knew members of Congress who had given “reconnaissance tours” prior to the attack.
She referred to “Members of Congress who had groups passing through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 – a reconnaissance for the next day – those members of Congress who incited this violent mob, those members who tried to help our president undermine democracy’, adding: ‘I’m going to make sure they are held accountable.’
The 34 Democrats said they and their staff witnessed an extremely large number of outside groups in the complex on Tuesday, Jan. 5. They called the visits suspicious and noted that tours were limited at the time due to the pandemic.
The Capitol Police Department said at the time that they were investigating the matter.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi also warned that if Republican members of the House helped the rioters, they would be punished.
“If members of Congress are found to have been complicit in this insurgency — if they aided and instigated the crimes — action may need to be taken outside of Congress in terms of prosecution,” Ms Pelosi said at the time.
Republicans vehemently denied the allegations.
One lawmaker, Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican accused by a Democrat of giving a tour, said in a statement that she had “never given a tour of the U.S. Capitol to anyone other than family members in the city.” for my swearing-in.” She called the charge an “irresponsible lie.”
Mr. Loudermilk also denounced the allegations and joined an ethics complaint against Democrats that they had leveled.
“A member of Congress accusing another member of committing a crime without evidence is morally reprehensible and a blot on this institution,” he said in a statement in May 2021. “No Republican congressman led any form of ‘Reconnaissance’ tours of the Capitol, evidenced by security footage captured by United States Capitol Police.”
In February, Mr. Davis sent a letter to Ms. Pelosi, demanding that she order the Capitol Police Department to release video footage of the complex beginning Jan. 6 that he said would clear Republicans.
