By Annie Grayer, CNN

Washington (CNN) — When reporters asked Mike Johnson to respond to President Donald Trump’s pardons for more than 1,000 people charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, the House speaker had a ready answer.

“We’re not looking backwards. We’re looking forward,” he said Wednesday morning.

Barely three hours later, Johnson announced the creation of a new select subcommittee to continue the GOP’s probe into January 6, because “there is more work to be done.” He also said Republicans would investigate pardons handed out by President Joe Biden on his way out the door.

Wednesday’s whiplash showed how Johnson is being pulled in opposite directions: Moderate and vulnerable members of the GOP’s historically narrow majority want the party to look ahead and focus on its agenda. But a significant swath of conservatives – and Trump himself – aren’t done with the past.

Before Trump took office, he told Johnson that he wanted House Republicans to prioritize re-litigating the previous investigation into January 6, two sources familiar with the conversations told CNN. Behind the scenes, Johnson wrestled for weeks with how to implement Trump’s request.

The speaker wanted to keep his promise to the president, whose backing is crucial to his political survival, while also paying heed to his more vulnerable members. Johnson also had limited options of where to put Georgia GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s investigation this Congress because House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil communicated to House GOP leadership that he no longer wanted the probe under his panel, three sources said. A Steil spokesperson said he supported Loudermilk’s investigation.

Johnson’s procedural solution was to announce that Loudermilk, who has also discussed the issue with Trump, would continue his investigation relitigating January 6 as a new select subcommittee under House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan. Loudermilk also said the probe fit better under the Judiciary Commitee’s jurisdiction. But that won’t necessarily fix Johnson’s political quandary.

North Carolina GOP Rep. Richard Hudson – who leads the House GOP campaign arm that built a hardline message around immigration and inflation to help Republicans keep their House majority – told CNN when asked about his party’s efforts to re-examine January 6 and other investigations, “It’s not what I’m focusing on. I’m focusing on moving forward.”

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of three Republicans who won a district that Trump lost in November, told CNN, “It’s a lot of going backwards” when asked if he would support a new Republican-led committee investigating January 6.

And before Trump came back to the White House, it was a topic many tried to avoid. Johnson still hasn’t hung a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers who responded to the January 6 attack, even though Congress passed a law that required one be placed by March 2023.

Republicans are now weighing what other elements of Trump’s personal agenda should be part of their investigative slate.

They have signaled they may pursue investigations targeting former special counsel Jack Smith over his two criminal cases against Trump and former special counsel David Weiss over his handling of the tax and gun prosecutions of Biden’s son, Hunter. Lawmakers also have put members of the Biden administration on notice that they’ll be under scrutiny.

Trump has made Cabinet picks, like Kash Patel for FBI director and Pam Bondi for attorney general, who’ve amplified his claims that the Biden administration was weaponized against him. Biden’s preemptive pardons for prominent Trump critics and members of his own family — unprecedented in recent presidential history — have also fueled Republicans’ desire to scour the last administration.

But Republican leadership is still figuring out what that looks like, beyond saying they want to have accountability for what they perceived as lawfare against Trump and a double standard by Biden.

Jordan, whose Judiciary panel will be home to many of these probes, shared that his approach to investigations into the Biden administration will be to focus on “unanswered questions. The Ohio Republican referenced the discovery of pipe bombs outside both Republican and Democratic headquarters on January 6 and the presence of some paid FBI informants at the Capitol that day.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who is leading the House Judiciary subcommittee where a lot of this oversight work will originate, said that he does plan to look back at the Biden administration on several fronts.

“I don’t want to just rehash them for the sake of rehashing them” the New Jersey Republican told CNN. “I get it, sometimes you move beyond things. But I want to know what went wrong, how it went wrong. What we are doing about it now to make sure it never happens to anybody, Republican or Democrat again.”

But GOP leaders will have to contend with lawmakers like Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of two remaining Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Newhouse said he’d rather focus on “energy, high cost of everything, inflation, security, there’s so many different things.” (Newhouse also said Trump’s pardons of people convicted of violent acts on January 6 were a “middle finger to law enforcement and to our judicial system.”)

Trump doesn’t always want to hear from such members.

When Trump invited groups of GOP lawmakers to Mar-a-Lago earlier this month prior to taking office, he purposefully left off Rep. David Valadao of California, the other remaining Republican who had voted to impeach Trump.

“I was fine with it,” Valadao told CNN.

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