Barry Loudermilk Wasted $250K Making Security Footage available on Rumble

In response to Barry Loudermilk’s report on January 6, his counterpart of the committee, Joe Morelle, released a response. [Alternate link]

I’ll say more about its central Speech and Debate argument; as I’ve noted, DOJ can’t investigate Liz Cheney without falling afoul of the same Speech and Debate that protected Scott Perry from investigation for his role in the insurrection.

But there’s an important detail that deserves its own post.

There’s a long section of the report that describes right wing efforts to make security footage from January 6 available. It describes how, rather than hosting the video on the Committee’s own website, right wingers chose to post it on Rumble instead. It includes a quote from USCP Acting Director of Intelligence Julie Farnham about the downsides of doing so: It meant making the content readily available to extremists.

Ms. Farnam: Well, the audience is largely extremists, and those are people who have — not everyone, but some of them have celebrated the threats to our democracy and have worked to undermine our democracy. And so having that security information makes it even more dangerous for the people trying to protect the Capitol and more dangerous for all the Members of Congress.188

And for the privilege of making security video readily available to extremists, the report reveals, Republicans paid $250,000.

In other words, Barry Loudermilk and Mike Johnson wasted tax payer money to make themselves and their colleagues less safe.