Almost immediately after Donald Trump pardoned Jan. 6 criminals, including convicted felons who violently clashed with police, congressional Republicans were asked for their reactions. Most tried to adopt a forward-thinking posture.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for example, said in response to questions about the pardons, “We’re looking at the future, not the past.” Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota echoed that sentiment, saying, “I’m ready to move forward.”

This was a badly flawed reaction for a variety of reasons, but House Speaker Mike Johnson held to his party’s preferred talking point, too. “The president’s made a decision, we move forward,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters on the third day of the new Trump era. Johnson added, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”

As it happens, that wasn’t altogether true. GOP officials didn’t want to look back at Trump’s pardons in January 2025, but they most certainly want to look back at the insurrectionist violence from January 2021. Roll Call reported:

A select subcommittee to continue a Republican-led reinvestigation of the events around Jan. 6, 2021, has officially been given the green light. It’s been a long time coming for Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who helmed a similar subpanel under the House Administration Committee last Congress and lobbied leadership for a new venue in the 119th. Roughly eight months after Loudermilk and Speaker Mike Johnson announced their intentions to form the subcommittee — and after prolonged negotiations — he’s finally cleared to get to work.

The panel will have eight members, who’ll be chosen by the House speaker, but the partisan split will not be even: The resolution said no more than three of the eight members will be appointed “in consultation” with the Democratic minority.

Ahead of the vote on the resolution, Johnson defended the effort, insisting, “[T]here is clearly more work to be done.”

In reality, it’s not nearly as “clear” as the GOP leader wants the public to believe.

In case anyone needs a refresher, it was just a few years ago that the Republican majority in the House decided it was time for a new, GOP-friendly investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, one that might offer an alternative view to the official, bipartisan work conducted by the actual Jan. 6 committee. This new endeavor, Republicans announced, would be led by Loudermilk, who had faced some uncomfortable questions about a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot.

After launching his own Jan. 6 probe, the Georgia Republican’s first step was simple: He exonerated himself.

In the months that followed, Loudermilk said he intended to determine “what really happened” on Jan. 6, seemingly indifferent to the fact that we already learned what really happened.

More than a year after launching the partisan probe, Loudermilk and his GOP colleagues released a report on their findings, which was effectively meaningless and broke no new ground. If the goal was to rewrite the story, it failed. Even most Republicans blew it off as irrelevant.

Loudermilk and his cohorts might’ve hoped to discredit earlier findings and expose shocking new details that would alter the public’s understanding of the assault on the Capitol, but the partisan bombshell was a dud.

In the months that followed, Loudermilk continued to engage in half-hearted efforts — he even asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into former House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney for foolish reasons that collapsed under scrutiny — but by any fair measure, the entire endeavor was a failure.

Congressional Democrats barely bothered to push back against Loudermilk’s “investigation” for the most insulting of reasons: They saw it as too boring and pitiful to warrant a full-throated response.

And now House Republican leaders have settled on a brilliant idea: Johnson wants the same congressman who failed in his previous Jan. 6 investigation to keep going with another Jan. 6 investigation in the current Congress — all while telling the public that GOP lawmakers are “looking forward” and leaving Jan. 6 in the rearview mirror.

MAGA activists who are expecting blockbuster revelations should probably start lowering their expectations now.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.