Ahead of the anticipated final report from the House Democrats’ January 6th Committee sometime this week, Republicans in the House are expected to release their own “shadow report” in response.
According to Axios, an anonymous Republican source said that “we’re prepared to release it when they release theirs.” While the Democrats’ report is expected to largely blame the peaceful protests on President Donald Trump, the GOP will most likely turn its focus to the failure of security measures ahead of that day.
The official committee report is expected to be at least 1,000 pages long, whereas the GOP response will probably be around 100 pages long. Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Chairman of the January 6th Committee, said that eight chapters of the report, along with part of the executive summary, will be released on Monday, while the full report is expected to be released on Wednesday. The pending release of the committee’s report comes ahead of the GOP retaking a majority in the House of Representatives, at which point it is expected that the ruling party will disband the J6 Committee due to its partisan leanings.
Congressman Jim Banks (R-Ind.), one of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) original picks for the J6 Committee, is in charge of the shadow group after outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to seat him, along with Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), accusing them of being too radical and being directly involved with January 6th.
The five-member group consists of every Republican McCarthy wanted seated on the committee originally before withdrawing them after Pelosi’s refusal of Banks and Jordan. Instead, Pelosi herself appointed just two Republicans to the committee: Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), both of whom will not be returning to Congress in January.
The shadow report, Banks said, will “focus on security failures,” and will accuse the official committee of having “never dealt with the serious issues.” Aspects that will be expanded upon include the intelligence-gathering operation by the FBI and Capitol Police ahead of January 6th, as well as insufficient training for law enforcement officers. As a result, Banks said, the shadow report will also “dive into legislative and policy changes that could be made by the next speaker.”