The recently sunsetted House Jan. 6 committee released Trump White House visitor logs from December 2020 containing nearly 2,000 unredacted Social Security numbers.
At least three of the numbers, inadvertently leaked as part of the hoard of documents the committee posted online in recent weeks, belonged to members of former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Several Republican governors and floods of other Trump allies have been caught up in the privacy breach.
The document was taken down on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the leak, but the Government Publishing Office, which was responsible for posting the file online, does not appear to have notified the individuals whose private information was leaked.
South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi L. Noem, one of those whose information was exposed, is demanding answers from the Publishing Office, National Archives and Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and former chairman of the committee.
Her lawyers sent a sternly worded letter on Friday demanding a detailed accounting of “how the breach of privacy occurred, who was responsible, what steps each of you has taken to remedy the breach, and what specific measures and remedies will be taken to protect Governor Noem and her family in light of the public dissemination of their private information and the heightened risk for identity theft and any other future privacy violations.”
The committee has posted thousands of pages of documents online in recent weeks, including witness testimony and documents handed over by witnesses throughout its 18-month investigation.
In a parting shot before concluding its probe into the attack, the Democrat-led panel released its 814-page summation of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol as a parting shot before the committee is dissolved under a Republican-led House in the next Congress.
After holding a series of public hearings over the summer, the committee outlines in detail its account of what the lawmakers say was Mr. Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election and spur a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol as Congress met to certify the results.
The report pins the blame for the Capitol attack squarely on the former president and offers what Mrs. Pelosi, the outgoing House speaker, called a “clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of the Constitution.”
The findings specifically accuse Mr. Trump of disseminating false allegations of election fraud related to the 2020 presidential election, pressuring state and local election officials in the wake of the election, summoning his supporters to Washington on Jan. 6 and inciting violence by his supporters.
Before releasing the report, the panel recommended in its final public proceeding that federal prosecutors pursue charges against the former president for inciting an insurrection against the U.S. government, obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the government and making false statements on fake presidential electors.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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