A two-year Republican inquiry has rewritten the narrative of the fateful attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago and two years after congressional Democrats put most of the blame on Donald Trump.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Georgia Republican, led the investigation that concluded Democrats’ single-minded focus on condemning Mr. Trump blinded them to many of the realities of Jan. 6, 2021.
The investigation punctured the story of the Democrats’ star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, that Mr. Trump grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential limousine and tried to force his Secret Service agents to take him to join the mob at the Capitol.
Republicans also released tapes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, taking responsibility for leaving the Capitol largely undefended. Democrats heaped that blame on Mr. Trump. The Republican rewrite also tarnished the Pentagon, which said top Defense Department officials failed to deliver on Mr. Trump’s valid requests for military support.
In their extensive review, Republicans said they found no evidence that Mr. Trump supported rioters chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged or that he secretly planned to join the mob at the Capitol.
The results, Mr. Loudermilk told The Washington Times, left Democrats’ narrative in tatters.
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“We have totally debunked it,” he said. “It is totally based on fiction, not fact. It’s a predetermined narrative. Nancy Pelosi and [former Rep.] Liz Cheney and the group decided what they wanted to be the truth, so they carefully edited and cherry-picked evidence to come up with a story.”
What is undeniable about Jan. 6 is that thousands of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol grounds. Perhaps 2,000 breached the building, roamed its halls and offices, and caused some damage.
Members of Congress, who were certifying the Electoral College vote count affirming Joseph R. Biden as the presidential winner, cowered and fled. So did Vice President Mike Pence, who barely missed a group of rioters.
One woman was fatally shot as she and fellow rioters tried to break into an off-limits area near the House chamber. The subsequent deaths of five police officers have been attributed to the stress and chaos of the day. One suffered a stroke immediately after the riot, and four died by suicide within seven months.
Democrats, who controlled both chambers of Congress in the aftermath, announced a House investigation of the riot, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, named hard-charging members of his party to serve on the panel. Mrs. Pelosi refused to seat them, triggering a Republican boycott.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Illinois Republican, was approved for the panel, and Ms. Cheney, Wyoming Republican, was named vice chair.
Democratic members were Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the Mississippi lawmaker who chaired the committee, and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff and Pete Aguilar of California; Stephanie Murphy of Florida; Jamie Raskin of Maryland; and Elaine Luria of Virginia.
They found fault with the police and Pentagon responses but concluded that Mr. Trump’s resistance to the election results incited the mob. They said Mr. Trump called for supporters to march to the Capitol, attempted to join them, failed to order better defenses in preparation for the day, and refused to strenuously call for calm as the Capitol was breached.
The characterizations of Mr. Trump’s resistance to the election results stood up, but other claims fared poorly under Republican scrutiny.
Mr. Loudermilk said Ms. Hutchinson, whose testimony was the cornerstone of Democrats’ blame game, was shown to be unreliable. It was only after back-channel negotiations with Ms. Cheney that she claimed Mr. Trump sided with rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and that he grabbed the steering wheel of the presidential limousine.
The people supposedly involved refuted both claims.
“The Select Committee chose to promote Hutchinson’s version of events — citing a series of other unnamed individuals who were further removed from the alleged incident than even Hutchinson — over that of two federal law enforcement agents who were the only possible eyewitnesses,” Mr. Loudermilk’s investigation concluded.
In one of the more bizarre instances, Ms. Hutchinson falsely claimed to have drafted a handwritten note for White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the riot, he said.
Mr. Loudermilk hired a handwriting expert who concluded that Ms. Hutchinson did not write the note.
The Republican inquiry also concluded that the military intentionally delayed deployment of the National Guard despite Mr. Trump’s Jan. 3 directive that the military give all necessary assistance.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, recalled what Mr. Trump said: “It’s going to be a large amount of protesters coming here on the 6th, and make sure that you have sufficient National Guard or Soldiers to make sure it’s a safe event.”
The acting defense secretary later said he considered those directives “throwaway lines.” Pentagon leaders said they were worried about the appearance of helping Mr. Trump’s election resistance.
Republicans say the Democratic-led investigation also wrongly shielded Mrs. Pelosi from blame.
The investigation uncovered video from an HBO documentary film crew, led by Mrs. Pelosi’s daughter, that captured Mrs. Pelosi as she was being evacuated from the Capitol. The House speaker said, “I take responsibility” for not having the National Guard on hand.
“We have responsibility, Terri,” she told her chief of staff, Terri McCullough. “We did not have any accountability for what was going on there, and we should have.”
Mr. Loudermilk’s inquiry said the Democratic investigation did not answer some key questions, such as who erected a gallows on the Capitol Grounds on the day of the riot.
He said several nearby offices had cameras that could have revealed the culprits’ identities, but neither the FBI nor the Democrats’ investigators seemed to review the USCP CCTV footage. If they did, they never released information about when the gallows were built or who built them.
He also wondered how the gallows were allowed to be built and remain up for about 26 hours.
“It is inconceivable that gallows could be constructed on U.S. Capitol property and left up all day,” Mr. Loudermilk said. “These men arrived early in the morning, several hours before the rally even started or anyone had gathered, to construct the gallows platform, yet this structure was allowed to stay intact for all to see.”
Mr. Loudermilk said the Democrats’ investigators failed to archive some of their work, such as videos of private interviews.
He said his team had to repeat much of the Democrats’ work to understand how they reached their conclusions.
Democrats said they turned over what they could and said some materials weren’t archived because they weren’t required. In other cases, Democrats said the materials could have implicated national security or threatened witnesses’ safety.
A spokesman for Ms. Cheney didn’t respond to an inquiry for this report.
After Mr. Loudermilk called for Ms. Cheney to face criminal investigation for her role in the Jan. 6 investigation, she released a statement saying Mr. Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth” and “fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”
“Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth,” Ms. Cheney said.
The Washington Times has reached out to the office of Mr. Thompson, the Democrat who led the investigation with Ms. Cheney.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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