Lawmaker probing J6 is worried U.S. Capitol Police intelligence was politicized against Republicans

The House chairman tasked with investigating law enforcement and intelligence failures related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot says he is probing whether U.S. Capitol Police intelligence gathering was weaponized by House Democratic leadership against their Republican colleagues in the aftermath of the Capitol riot.  Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who is the Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on January 6, said he suspects that Democrats used the department to gather information on Republican lawmakers concurrent with the Justice Department’s wider Arctic Frost probe into alleged efforts by President Donald Trump and his followers to contest the 2020 election results. 
Loudermilk told Just the News that what former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and others told his committee raises questions about how the department’s intelligence arm might have been used to further what he says was “weaponization against members of Congress.” 
“Political weaponization against members of Congress”
“There may be some evidence out there that this [Arctic Frost] extended all the way into Congress, that there was investigation and political weaponization against members of Congress that may even have ties with the Select Committee on January 6,” Loudermilk told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Tuesday, referring to the Democrat-led committee that probed the Trump administration alongside the Justice Department.  
“There’s others who have spoken to us about efforts within the political element of Congress, within the Democrat Party, who were actively seeking access to the Capitol Police database and their intelligence, and they were using that intelligence against sitting members of Congress,” Loudermilk added. 
The probe into Trump and his allies in the aftermath of Jan. 6, code named “Arctic Frost,” was led by an openly anti-Trump FBI supervisor, and was eventually taken over by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith. The probe treated the effort by Trump’s allies to submit alternate electors to Congress to sway the certification of the 2020 election as a criminal conspiracy, even though two prior episodes in American history were not prosecuted as crimes. 
Experts told Just the News last year the FBI memo that officially launched the investigation, around the time that Trump announced he would run for president again, was thin on evidence and legal justifications. 
Snooping and snapping
The House Judiciary Committee, the parent of Loudermilk’s subcommittee, released FBI records last year showing that the Arctic Frost investigators targeted more than 160 Republicans in Donald Trump’s orbit, including members of the president’s staff and Republican officials from the House and Senate.  
Loudermilk pointed to the case of Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, a member of his subcommittee, who claims that Capitol Police searched his office. Nehls alleged in a lawsuit last year that an officer improperly entered his office during the 2021 Thanksgiving break and snapped a photograph of his office whiteboard. Later, plainclothes officers returned to the office and questioned a staffer about the whiteboard without the congressman’s permission, the court documents allege. 
“That is totally outside the realm of anything acceptable here,” Loudermilk said of the Nehls search. “He was investigated as a member of Congress by the US Capitol Police, and I know he has litigation regarding that going right now, but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of what may have been happening, not only in the Wray FBI, but under the Pelosi House of Representatives as well.” 
“It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target,” Nehls says
Nehls also told Just the News that he believes the Capitol Police spied on him because of his outspoken criticism of the department in the wake of Jan. 6. 
“I think that the Capitol Police, they found a few weaklings in there to go out there and spy – I will say ‘spy’ – and look into members of Congress that were very, very outspoken and critical of January 6,” Nehls told the John Solomon Reports podcast. 
“We found out that these employees worked for the intelligence division of the U.S. Capitol Police. Now, why would you need these intelligence guys, these plain clothes guys, to just show up? It just stinks to high heaven, but I believe I was a target,” Nehls added. 
Former Capitol Police Chief Sund confirmed that even before Jan. 6 he faced increasing pressure from Democratic leadership for access to the Capitol Police intelligence unit, which he called “very concerning.”
Sund told Just the News that “it was an ongoing process where we had, you know, people, senior staffers, like from [Senator Chuck] Schumer’s staff that wanted to be involved in intelligence briefing, wanted to have access into the Capitol Police Headquarters, specifically to be able to access into the intelligence unit.”
Though he pushed back on those efforts, Sund told the John Solomon Reports podcast that he does not know what happened after he resigned on Jan. 16, 2021, just ten days after the riot during which hundreds of protesters entered the secured Capitol building. 
“My concern is, what happened after January 6? You know, did these people then all of a sudden, now get involved? They’re now on the intelligence calls, intelligence briefings, things like that. Now, are they using that for any political benefit?” Sund questioned. 
Loudermilk has doggedly investigated the Jan. 6 security failures and politicization related to the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Select Committee for years. He exposed a key witness who changed her story that was damaging to Trump and documented failures to secure key entry points at the U.S. Capitol before protesters entered. 
Pipe bomb mystery solved by Patel’s FBI
He also relentlessly pursued accountability for what was the biggest unsolved mystery of that day, how the FBI had failed to identify a suspect in the planting of two pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters. 
That case was blown open last year when the new FBI Director, Kash Patel, and his then-Deputy Director, Dan Bongino, brought a new team and a fresh perspective to the mountains of data collected by investigators. The new approach led to the arrest of suspect Brian Cole Jr. of Virginia. 
Earlier this month, Loudermilk subpoenaed T-Mobile for the phone records that it had turned over to the FBI and had languished in its possession until last year. 

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