President Donald Trump wasted no time Monday night delivering the pardons he promised Jan. 6 defendants – 1,500 in all. And in so doing, he upped the pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson to repudiate the findings of a Democrat-run panel whose findings have been factually challenged and whose conduct required an act of clemency.

The conduct of the Democrat-run Select House Committee on the Jan. 6 attack garnered new scrutiny Monday when departing President Joe Biden issued sweeping pardons for all lawmakers and staffers on that committee as well as a handful of police officers who testified to the panel.

It was a stunning act – some lawmakers who served on the committee also called it unwelcomed – that begged a provocative question: What did an official panel of Congress do that was so bad it needed to be absolved by an act of presidential clemency?

“You don't forgive somebody of something unless they have potentially done something,” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the Georgia Republican who took over the Jan. 6 probe from Democrats two years ago and exposed major factual flaws with the original investigation’s findings.

“I mean, to me, this is basically, if not an actual admission, it's truly the perception of admitting that there was wrongdoing done,” Loudermilk told Just the News.

Loudermilk has pushed for months for Congress to vote on whether the findings of the Jan. 6 committee that Democrats ran should be repudiated for history’s sake. His request is rooted in his own investigative finding showing the committee misled the American public, held exculpatory evidence and possible colluded with federal prosecutors.

Thus far he has not found the support from leadership, but he told Just the News that Biden’s sweeping pardon of all committee members and staffers strengthened his case.

“This pardon was a direct result of the work that our committee has done, exposing the truth, the corruption, the lies, the predetermined narrative, and not letting anything, including the truth or even laws and rules and regulations get in the way of creating the narrative that they wanted to create,” Loudermilk said of the prior Democrat committee during an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Johnson was silent Monday on the issue. But legal experts said Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for the committee and his own family members raised serious legal issues.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, suggested the pardons might not even be constitutional. 

“This abusive pardon of the Pelosi Jan. 6 rump committee is a mockery of the Constitution. And likely not valid,” he wrote on X.

Biden suggested he took the action to avoid unfair retributions against the committee and his family. 

“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden said in a statement. “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”

Trump himself weighed in at a post-inauguration rally and parade during which he called the committee led by Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney the “unselect Committee of Political Thugs.”

The two leaders of the former panel thanked Biden in a joint statement that suggested they were victims and not criminals.

“We express our gratitude to President Biden for recognizing that we and our families have been continuously targeted not only with harassment, lies and threats of criminal violence, but also with specific threats of criminal prosecution and imprisonment by members of the incoming administration, simply for doing our jobs and upholding our oaths of office,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said in the statement. 

“We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” they also said. 

Some legal experts said the pardons opened a new door for Republicans to pursue accountability through other means because members of the committee or Biden family members could no longer hide behind a claim of self-incrimination and therefore could be compelled to testify before a grand jury or other proceedings, potentially creating new legal peril if they lied.

“In reality, these pardons will not absolutely protect these individuals from being subpoenaed to give new testimony on prior claims,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote on X. “Lying in such interviews or hearings would constitute new criminal acts.”

Loudermilk said Trump and Johnson each have told him they support a continued investigation of the prior Jan. 6 committee, a vehicle that could create such jeopardy for witnesses like former lawmakers and staffers.

“I have talked to the President. Yes, he is 100% behind it, and has told me that he's really proud of the work that we've done,” Loudermilk said. “He just wants to get the truth and knows that we have more work to do, and wants a select committee with me leading it to continue to do that work.

“I had a brief conversation finally with the speaker last week, and there's still questions, I guess, with how we're going to set it up,” he also said. “But he has told me we will discuss that this week, and I emphasize to him, we need to do this quickly. The clock is burning.”

Loudermilk also raised another tantalizing possibility: pursuing committee members or staff under civil fraud statutes because they used taxpayer funds.

“They didn't release certain documents that didn't support their narrative,” he said. “This whole structure of the committee is not within the constraints of what the legislation said, and they totally ignored any security vulnerabilities here at the Capitol. So with that in mind, I think we do have a case that it was misappropriation of funds."