Shortly after President Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked his reaction. He said he would not “second-guess” the president’s pardons.

“The President made a decision, we move forward," he said. "There are better days ahead of us. … We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forwards.”

Nevertheless, the next day, the Speaker startled his colleagues by announcing he was forming a select subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee to further investigate the Jan. 6 attack with a view to taking a deeper look at such things as the security failures of the Capitol police and the flawed investigation of the original Jan. 6 select committee.

The Speaker said he would appoint Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) as the select subcommittee’s chairman. Loudermilk, who previously conducted his own investigation into the matter as chair of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee in the last Congress, attempted to reconcile the Speaker’s two-directional responses above by observing that sometimes “

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