Do you also want to copy the .git history to be copied to your new repo or only the code files?

I suppose u want to you to copy the .git history too( tags, branches, commits) , use --bare flag while cloning to get just the .git history and then use the --mirror flag while pushing to the new repo which also regenerates the code files:

git clone --bare https://github.com/owner/repo1.git
cd repo1.git 
git push --mirror https://github.com/you/repo2.git