A House subcommittee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot is trying to recover 117 encrypted files that the now-disbanded House Select Jan. 6 Committee deleted before Republicans took the majority last year. 

A digital forensics team employed by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight discovered the data deletion occurred on Jan. 1, 2023, and were able to recover the password-protected files. The find was first reported by Fox News.

“Yes, these reports are accurate,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who sits on the subcommittee, confirmed to The Post. “Unfortunately, at this time, we cannot determine what was in the deleted files.”

“The Democrat-led J6 Select Committee obviously took great strides to shield certain information from us,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), another subcommittee member, told The Post. “The question is: why? What are they trying to hide? Their whole plan was to ‘get to the truth of the matter’. They obviously didn’t want the real truth, just ‘their’ truth.”

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), has since written to former House Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) requesting passwords to access the data, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Post.

Thompson “claimed” to have “turned over 4-terabytes of digital files, but the hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3- terabytes of data,” Loudermilk wrote.

He told Thompson that his subcommittee found “numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee” and asked for “a list of passwords” to “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.”

“One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk also wrote, pointing out that Thompson had previously admitted not all records were archived.

Others included “specific transcribed interviews and depositions to the White House and Department of Homeland Security” that were not archived “with the Clerk of the House,” he added.

Loudermilk has written follow-up letters to the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security asking for the “unedited and unredacted transcripts” of the testimonies.

He demanded that both comply with the request by Jan. 24.

Last week, Loudermilk told Fox News Digital his investigation has entered a “new phase” with support from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has committed additional resources to the panel’s investigation.

Loudermilk explained that after a forensic analysis of the data and archived hard drives, he was able to recover “numerous digital records from hard drives archived by the Select Committee.”

“One recovered file disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee,” Loudermilk wrote. “Further, we found that most of the recovered files are password-protected, preventing us from determining what they contain.”

Loudermilk asked that Thompson provide him “a list of passwords for all password-protected files created by the Select Committee” so that his committee can “access these files and ensure they are properly archived.”

“We don’t know yet what’s in the deleted and encrypted deleted files,” Loudermilk told The Post in a statement. “If the former January 6 Select Committee has nothing to hide, then why would they prevent Americans from seeing all the evidence produced in their investigation? They were hiding something, and we will continue to uncover the truth.”

“DHS responds to congressional correspondence directly via official channels, and the Department will continue to respond appropriately to Congressional oversight,” a spokesperson told The Post

Reps for Thompson’s office and the White House Counsel’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.