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“Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompsonsaid in a press releaseWednesday, renewing a request for Loudermilk to provide information to the panel for its investigation of the attack and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to keepDonald Trumpin the White House.
Rep. Loudermilk is also seen in the footage.
Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol
The Georgia lawmaker previously acknowledgedhe welcomed people into parts of the Capitol complexon Jan. 5, when it was closed due to pandemic restrictions, but denied it was for a “reconnaissance tour.”
“A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House office buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour.’ The family never entered the Capitol building,” Loudermilk said in a statement in May.
“No place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th, the family did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th, and no one in that family has been investigated or charged in connection to January 6th,” the statement also said.
“I don’t know him. I’ve never met him before,” he added of the man in the video.
Loudermilk was also asked about the claim that the man took photos of security checkpoints in a basement and of a stairwell.
The lawmaker said he brought the visitors to those areas because the children in the group “wanted to see the little trains” — referring to the Capitol subway system that takes lawmakers to and from their offices and congressional chambers — and a “golden eagle sconce on the wall” in the stairwell.
“They’re not interested in the truth. They’re only interested in creating a narrative for [the media],” Loudermilk said of the committee, adding that his office never received a letter requesting his cooperation. “There’s nothing there.”
Loudermilk also mentioned that the Capitol Police examined surveillance video and determined that there was nothing suspicious about the tour he led.
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said earlier this week in a letter to the top Republican on the House Administration Committee,The Washington Postreported. “We train our officers on being alert for people conducting surveillance or reconnaissance, and we do not consider any of the activities we observed as suspicious.”
However, Chairman Thompson and the committee vice chair, Republican Rep.Liz Cheney, said in the May letter to Loudermilk that the Jan. 6 investigation’s “review of evidence directly contradicts that denial.”
source: people.com
