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Republican officials have a go-to move in response to probes they consider politically inconvenient. It’s known as the “investigate the investigation” tactic.
As regular readers know, the GOP was unmoved by Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, but it cared about the investigation into the investigation. The party didn’t care that Hillary Clinton was cleared in her email controversy, but some Republicans endorsed investigating the investigation. The GOP shrugged at Trump extorting Ukraine in 2019, but the then-president was an enthusiastic proponent of investigating the investigators.
It’s clearly time to add the Jan. 6 committee and its investigation to the list. CNN reported:
Republicans in the House are beginning to plot multiple probes into the 2021 Capitol attack, including looking into the Democratic-led select committee’s actions from the last Congress. ... GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, an ally of McCarthy’s, will now lead a new GOP probe into January 6, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. As chairman of the House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight, the Georgia Republican is expected to focus on the select committee....
CNN’s report, which has been confirmed by NBC News, added that Loudermilk “has already begun poring over the more than 2 million documents of the January 6 select committee’s work.” It went on to note that the Republican congressman “plans to staff up, hold hearings and could even issue subpoenas if needed.”
If Loudermilk’s name sounds at all familiar in this context, there’s a good reason: The Georgian had an evolving explanation last year in response to allegations that he gave a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot. Now, that same GOP congressman is helping lead an investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation.
To be sure, this isn’t coming out of nowhere. Shortly after the 2022 midterm elections, then-House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, as he prepared to become House speaker, contacted the Jan. 6 committee and directed it to preserve its records for future examination. It was a needlessly confrontational move — the panel and its members were already preserving the materials — that suggested a GOP probe of the probe was on the way.
Three months later, those plans appear to be coming to fruition.
The funny thing is, none of this seems to bother those involved in the bipartisan select committee’s work. Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, for example, wrote on Twitter yesterday, “[If the House GOP conference] wants new Jan. 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness [and] all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence.”
I heard similar talk from Capitol Hill Democrats late last year, after McCarthy sent his letter on document retention. As far as they were concerned, the more Republicans talked about the attack, the scrutiny of who was responsible for the insurrectionist assault, and the voluminous evidence compiled by congressional investigators, the better.
It was against this backdrop that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was asked yesterday about the latest fight over Jan. 6 security camera footage. “It seems like some in the press want to talk about Jan. 6 every day,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters.
But it’s not the press that’s keeping the conversation going: If Scalise wants less focus on the Capitol attack, he should probably have a chat with McCarthy, Loudermilk, and Tucker Carlson.