WASHINGTON — United States Capitol Police confirmed Monday a Republican congressman led a group through parts of two House office buildings on Jan. 5, 2021, but that officers didn’t deem it suspicious.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released the letter Tuesday morning through social media. The letter, addressed to Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) – the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration – came in response to a request by Davis last week for Capitol police to review footage from Jan. 5 “related to a visit by constituents of Representative Barry Loudermilk.” Davis’ request was itself a response to a May 19 letter from the January 6th Committee about a tour Loudermilk may have led.
“The truth will always prevail,” Loudermilk wrote in a tweet with the USCP letter attached. “As I’ve said since the Jan. 6 Committee made their baseless accusation about me to the media, I never gave a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 5, 2021, and a small group visiting their congressman is in no way a suspicious activity. Now the Capitol Police have confirmed this fact.”
The committee’s May 19 letter did not accuse Loudermilk of leading a tour through the U.S. Capitol Building itself, but rather said it had information Loudermilk led a group through “parts of the Capitol complex.” The complex includes the grounds and 20 buildings, among them the Rayburn and Cannon House Office buildings. According to the USCP statement, footage shows Loudermilk did lead “a group of approximately 12 people which later grew to 15 people” through parts of the Rayburn Building, where Loudermilk’s office is, and the Cannon Building, which houses a series of exhibits from the House Collection in its basement.
It was unclear from the USCP letter how long Loudermilk was with the group. The department’s timeline said the tour began at approximately 11 a.m. at the Rayburn Building when the group met with a congressional staffer. The tour continued through at least 1 p.m. at the Cannon Building. At some point, while the group was looking at the exhibits in the building’s basement, Loudermilk separated from the group.
“There is no evidence that Representative Loudermilk entered the U.S. Capitol with this group on January 5, 2021,” Capitol Police said in its letter Monday.
Capitol Police said the group also never appeared in any tunnels that would have led them to the Capitol, and that those tunnels were posted with officers who would have denied access to anyone not in the presence of a member of Congress. Public tours were suspended across the Capitol complex on Jan. 5, as they had been since March 11, 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Concerns about possible tours of the Capitol drew significant attention in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol Building. In the week after the assault, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) called the alleged tours “a reconnaissance for the next day” (the Jan. 6 committee’s May 19 letter did not accuse Loudermilk of leading a reconnaissance tour). Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) also claimed to have personally witnessed tours of the Capitol.
"In the lead up to Jan. 6, what I witnessed was members of the public, people who had no business being in the Capitol during the shutdowns, milling about in the office buildings," Spanberger said. "The way that these individuals would have entered the Capitol in the first place would have been with a member of Congress making that possible.”
Loudermilk, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former member of both chambers of the Georgia State Legislature, was one of more than 120 Republicans to sign an amicus brief contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election and voted on Jan. 6 to object to the certification of Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. In a December 2020 statement, he said he had “reasonable and significant doubt” that the electors from his own state of Georgia “actually reflect the true will of the people.”
Loudermilk was also one of a group of Republicans on the Committee on House Administration who reviewed footage of the days preceding Jan. 6 and determined, according to the January 6th Committee’s letter, that “[t]here were no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on.”
In its May letter, the committee requested Loudermilk testify about the tour on Jan. 5. A week prior, it had taken the nearly unprecedented step of subpoenaing five GOP representatives. They included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who are both believed to have spoken directly with former President Donald Trump during the Capitol riot. In its subpoenas, the committee said the recipients include “those who participated in meetings at the White House, those who had direct conversations with President Trump leading up to and during the attack on the Capitol, and those who were involved in the planning and coordination of certain activities on and before January 6th.”
We're tracking all of the arrests, charges and investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol. Sign up for our Capitol Breach Newsletter here so that you never miss an update.