In a new report released on Monday, House Republicans revealed that the Democrat-led January 6th Committee deliberately withheld crucial evidence regarding President Trump’s actions on January 6th, 2021, including the testimony of his limousine’s driver.
As reported by Just The News, the report was released by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight after a year-long probe into the actions of the January 6th Committee and its alleged investigation into the security failures on January 6th. Some of the information uncovered by the Republican investigation included direct contradictions to several claims made by the Democrats.
The report, released by Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), included testimony from the Secret Service agent who was driving President Trump’s limousine on that day. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson infamously claimed, with no evidence, that President Trump attempted to lunge for the steering wheel to turn the vehicle back around towards the Capitol, supposedly so he could join in on the protest. However, the driver debunked Hutchinson’s claim.
“The driver testified that he specifically refuted the version of events as recounted by Hutchinson,” the report reveals. “The driver of the SUV testified that he ‘did not see him reach [redacted]. [President Trump] never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all.’”
Even after the January 6th Committee heard from the driver, members of the committee continued to repeat and support Hutchinson’s lie, including Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Thompson dismissed the revelations without refuting them.
“Loudermilk is merely trying to deflect from Donald Trump’s responsibility for the violence of January 6 and his own refusal to answer the select committee’s questions,” said Thompson in a statement.
The report further reveals that President Trump did formally offer up to 10,000 additional National Guard troops to the U.S. Capitol ahead of January 6th. But his offer was rejected by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who failed to provide adequate security on that day despite warnings that the planned protest could get out of control.
“The events of January 6, 2021, were preventable,” the report concluded. “The politicization of Capitol security directly contributed to the many structural and procedural failures witnessed that day.”
The January 6th Committee was notoriously partisan from the beginning. Although Pelosi originally offered to let the committee be roughly evenly staffed by Democrats and Republicans, she refused to seat two of the members that then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested: Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.). McCarthy subsequently refused to seat any Republicans on the committee out of protest, and only two Republicans voluntarily joined after being suggested by Pelosi: Cheney and Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.); this move led to both of them leaving Congress after the 2022 midterms, with Cheney losing her primary in a landslide to Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Kinzinger announcing his retirement.