Republican lawmakers on Tuesday requested documents from three major U.S. cellular companies related to the FBI's request for cell phone records during its investigation of the pipe bombs planted at campaign headquarters of both major parties ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, one of the signatories who led the investigation into the security failures of Jan. 6 last Congress, said last year that the cell companies disputed previous FBI testimony to Congress that the data they had turned over to the bureau was corrupted and, therefore, the agents couldn't identify a suspect in the case because the phone data was corrupted. 

Despite a clear suspect in the planting of the pipe bombs at both the Democratic and Republican Party national headquarters, the FBI failed to identify the individual. Video evidence of the suspect using what appears to be a cellphone spurred the FBI to request the phone data, though the agent in charge of the Washington Field Office at the time told Congress in his testimony that the data the FBI had received was corrupted and therefore could not be used. 

The letters, from Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., ask the three companies, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to provide any communications with federal law enforcement about the phone records and to detail the timeline of the FBI's requests. 

Separately, the lawmakers are calling on the FBI to provide records and communications relating to the pipe bomb investigation and the supposedly corrupted cell phone data. 

You can read the letters below: 

"In the days and weeks following January 6, 2021, the FBI opened an investigation into the pipe bomber and attempted to identify the suspect by analyzing cell phone data linked to the area surrounding the RNC and DNC,” Loudermilk told Just the News in November. 

“In June 2023, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Steve D’Antuono, who oversaw the pipe bomb investigation, said that the FBI received corrupted data from one of the cell carriers and that it most likely contained the identity of the pipe bomber. Given the significance of this information, my Subcommittee sent letters to the three major cell carriers, asking them to respond to Mr. D’Antuono’s claim of corrupted data,” he said.