The leaders of the Jan. 6 committee suggested Thursday there may be evidence to support New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s allegation that GOP lawmakers gave “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol a day before the insurrection.
The Republican congressman who filed ethics charges against Sherrill for making her allegation, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., may have actually conducted a tour and has been asked to answer questions about a possible visit, according to committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and vice chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.
They asked Loudermilk to provide information “regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021.”
“Public reporting and witness accounts indicate some individuals and groups engaged in efforts to gather information about the layout of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, in advance of Jan. 6, 2021,” Thompson and Cheney wrote.
Sherrill’s response: “Sadly, nothing in the Jan. 6 committee’s letter surprises me.”
Loudermilk and the House Administration Committee’s ranking Republican, Rodney Davis of Illinois, said in response that the only meeting was with a family with young children and they were in the House office buildings, not the Capitol. They said such a family was “not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour.’”
“The Select Committee is once again pushing a verifiably false narrative that Republicans conducted ‘reconnaissance tours’ on Jan. 5,” the two Republicans said. “The facts speak for themselves; no place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th.”
They said the Capitol Police should release the tapes of any Jan. 5 activities.
Loudermilk, who asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out millions of votes for Joe Biden in battleground states and then voted to reject certified votes in two states, asked the House Ethics Committee last May to investigate Sherrill and other Democrats for falsely making the charges about Republican-led Capitol tours.
He and Davis said Thursday that they stand by their ethics complaint.
“Any member who pushes false allegations against another member should be held accountable,” they said.
Sherrill, D-11th Dist., first made the charges in a Facebook Live event the week after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from ratifying Biden’s election as president.
“We can’t have a democracy if members of Congress are actively helping the president overturn the elections results,” Sherrill said at the time. “I’m going to see they are held accountable, and if necessary, ensure that they don’t serve in Congress.”
She then joined 33 other lawmakers in asking the Capitol Police and the House and Senate sergeants at arms for an investigation, noting the “extremely high number of outside groups” in the Capitol complex the day before the riot at a time when tours were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.
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