The House Select January 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files just days before Republicans took the majority in the lower chamber last year, a new report claims.

The Administration Committee’s oversight subcommittee has been investigating the security failures at the Capitol since the GOP won control of the House. The chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Barry Loudermilk, says his panel has reached a “new phase” of its investigation with the support of Speaker Johnson. 

According to sources who spoke with Fox News, Mr. Loudermilk is now pressing the select committee and its former members to turn over more than a terabyte of documents that were allegedly shielded from the oversight subcommittee.

Mr. Loudermilk is castigating the former chairman of the January 6 Committee, Congressman Bennie Thompson, for allegedly not immediately turning over the documents. Mr. Loudermilk has recovered the deleted files, but still requires access to passwords from Mr. Thompson before he can open the documents. 

Mr. Loudermilk also says the January 6 Committee did not follow the rules of the House with respect to the archiving of transcribed interviews and depositions. 

“As you acknowledged in your July 7, 2023 letter, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (Select Committee) did not archive all Committee records as required by House Rules,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote in a letter to Mr. Thompson. “You wrote that you sent specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security but did not archive them with the Clerk of the House.”

“It’s obvious that Pelosi’s select committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation,” Mr. Loudermilk told Fox News. “It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules.”

“The American people deserve to know the full truth, and Speaker Johnson has empowered me to use all tools necessary to recover these documents to get the truth, and I will,” he continued. 

The investigation into the January 6 attack and the select committee has been a favorite goal for conservatives in the House. Just hours after taking the gavel as speaker in October, Mr. Johnson released tens of thousands of hours of security footage from the January 6 attack. Speaker McCarthy also turned over some footage to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson last year.