House GOP demands Pelosi stop obstructing access to security records related to Jan 6

Rep. Rodney Davis wants to know why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is withholding records requested pertaining to security on Jan 6, 2020. After Jan. 6, Republicans also began looking into the vulnerabilities of Capitol security.

As such, Davis "sent letters to the Acting House Sergeant-at-Arms, the House Chief Administrative Officer, and the Acting Chief of the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) asking them to preserve all records relating to January 6th."

Pelosi struck two appointees to the Jan 6 committee, Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. They later asked Jordan to appear. He responded on Fox News, saying that he had "concerns" about appearing before a committee that had already been revealed to be altering evidence.

The GOP have offered their concerns since the Jan. 6 riot that there was not ample security present, and that there had been reason for Capitol Police to believe they should have had a heavier presence at the Capitol on that day.

The USCP "immediately complied," Davis wrote, with his ask "to preserve and produce relevant documents." But the "the two House officers who report directly to" Pelosi, the House Sergeant-at-Arms and Chief Administrative Officer, "responded jointly that they were 'unable to comply with the request at this time.'"

It has been nearly a year, and these officers still have not complied with the request for documentation. Davis writes that the attorneys for Paul D. Irving, House Sergeant-at-Arms, said that "the relevant records are the property of the U.S. House of Representatives," and that the request for those records was referred "to the House Office of General Counsel for transmission to the appropriate House officials."

Davis pressed for the requested materials, writing to House General Counsel Douglas Letter, but Letter did not even respond to the request, and the records still have not been provided by any of those who answer to Pelosi. Hence Davis taking it up directly with Pelosi.

Despite this refusal to provide, or in the case of Letter even acknowledge, the request, Pelosi's Jan 6. committee pressed on, demanding documents and records from an exhaustive list of Trump administration officials, newscasters, pundits, influencers, and others, to try to find some evidence of collusion or pre-planning of the Jan 6 riot. The FBI said there was "scant evidence" of that, yet Pelosi and her partisan team continue their search.

While the requests for records regarding the security situation on Jan 6 continued, "various federal entities began to produce January 6 material to several House committees, Republicans made requests—including to the House Sergeant-at- Arms and the House Chief Administrative Officer—that all such material be shared equally with Democrats and Republicans," Davis wrote to Pelosi.

The records were still not forthcoming, and Davis is forced to conclude that the House officers of whom the requests were made "may be providing documents only to Democrats on a partisan basis."

Pelosi, Davis writes, has more than a partisan obligation. She is Speaker of the US House, and "therefore ultimately responsible for all House operations," not just those of the Democrat party.

The Jan. 6 committee has issued subpoena's to former Trump officials and aides, some of whom have tried to invoke executive privilege. Davis writes that "there is irony" in this, "that at the same time House Democrats are holding witnesses in criminal contempt of Congress for raising genuine questions of legal privilege, you continue to obstruct Republican access to House records relating to the security preparedness of the Capitol complex on January 6th, 2021."

Davis calls this a double standard and said that it "only adds to the evidence that Democrats are weaponizing events of January 6th against their political adversaries."

The letter ends with a demand that Pelosi stop being obstructionist and "direct the House General Counsel to produce immediately all records from former Sergeant-at- Arms Irving that are in the possession of the House of Representatives."

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said that the Jan 6 riot was a "bigger threat to America" than the BLM and Antifa riots Americans endured in 2020.