‘Get the deal done’: GOP hardliner hails new Jan. 6 committee as Dems cry foul

WASHINGTON — This week House Republicans formally launched their long awaited new January 6 subcommittee. Unlike the first select committee, which investigated the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, the new panel is tasked with investigating the investigators.

“I want to see all the documents and find out how many lies were told by the people that were sitting on that committee,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) said on Thursday. “That's what I want.”

The former chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined 211 of his fellow Republicans — with only Rep. Kevin Kiely (R-CA) voting present, as not a single Democrat joined the effort — in unveiling and then establishing a “Select Subcommittee to Investigate the Remaining Questions Surrounding January 6, 2021.”

It will be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). He’s been helping the GOP rewrite the record on J6 for years but now he’s got a formal if hyper-partisan mandate, along with subpoena power hailed by Biggs and others on the far-right.

“Now I think the structure is going to really be much more helpful for it,” Biggs said. “In other words, I think the structure is necessary. It's a good structural change.”

‘I’ve done that’

The panel will have eight members, including three Democrats appointed after consultations between Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

The subcommittee’s subpoena power is expected to be a gamechanger.

“I think so, yeah,” Biggs said: “In talking with Chairman Loudermilk about it, he's been doing some good work. I've watched what he's done. We've talked. I think he just needed a new structure, and I think it's gonna provide the structure necessary to get the deal done.”

The first January 6 committee was formed in 2021. It staged high-profile hearings in 2022 and issued its report in January 2023, shortly after Republicans re-took the House.

That committee consisted of seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — deputy chair Liz Cheney, then representing Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, then a congressman from Illinois.

Both no longer sit in Congress, Cheney having lost her seat, Kinzinger having retired.

On Wednesday, Kinzinger posted a meme of the actor Will Ferrell beckoning a confrontation and said: “The fact that the so-called moderates in the House voted for this, is especially corrupt. But bring it on, happy to remind America how you guys attempted a coup.”

The next day, a Democrat who sat with Kinzinger on the original committee, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), told Raw Story the new panel was another instance of the GOP “trying to rewrite history.

“That's just kind of clearly what they've done since January 6,” he said. “This all fits the narrative.

“And it's dangerous. We'll see where they take the committee but it's dangerous behavior.”

Still, Aguilar has no desire to sit on another J6 panel.

“No. I’ve done that,” Aguilar said.

‘Distraction, deflection’

Loudermilk’s previous efforts to investigate the January 6 investigation and investigators were carried out from his perch on the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story she was “so infuriated” by Loudermilk’s new effort.

“It’s distraction, deflection,” Dean said.

“And I have said that the president pardoning insurrectionists, pardoning criminals, violent criminals, was a whitewashing, an attempt to rewrite history, and most importantly, he was pardoning himself. This is a continuation of that.”

On returning to power this year, Donald Trump pardoned around 1,500 offenders convicted over their actions on Jan. 6 2021, as part of the mob that listened to Trump speak then stormed Congress, in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.

Dean also lamented what she called “the stupid, the insane fight over the plaque” — a memorial to police who defended Congress which Republicans have refused to display.

“I actually went to the archives, to the basement, to see the actual plaque,” Dean said. “They have it. It's there. Oh, it's been there for months. It's done.”

“I don't know at what point the fever breaks,” Dean added of a Republican party in Trump’s grip.

“At what point do they say, ‘No, this is too much?’ Do you think Epstein might do it?”

Even through emotional and high-profile appearances on Capitol Hill from survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, House GOP leaders are refusing to release files relating to the late financier and sex offender who was long close to Trump.

Groceries, rents, tariffs

On the other side of the Capitol on Thursday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told Raw Story Republicans should focus on kitchen table issues, not rehashing old wars over January 6.

“Maybe they should be focused on the price of groceries,” Klobuchar said. “That might be better.

“Maybe they should focus on the tariffs and what's happening to people, not just their grocery bills, but their health care and their rent. So that would be a much more useful thing.”

There seems little chance of that.

Raw Story caught up with Rep. James Comer (R-KY), a leading Trump ally and chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Asked about the new Jan. 6 panel, he deflected.

“Trying to just keep up with my own portfolio,” Comer told Raw Story before lauding the new committee he expects “to investigate the investigators, to see if they were truthful in what they put in that final report. That’s what I understand.”