After probing Jan. 6, House GOP sides with Trump and goes after Liz Cheney

CNN
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After completing their own investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol, House Republicans have concluded that former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney should be prosecuted to investigate what happened when then-President Donald Trump sent his mob off supporters when Congress confirmed the 2020 election.

The results, released Tuesday, show that the Republican Party is working to reinforce Trump’s desire to punish his perceived enemies, including Cheney and members of the Jan. 6 committee, who the president-elect has said should be in prison.

“Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which says that ‘several federal laws were likely violated by Liz Cheney and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’ Thanks to Congressman Barry Loudermilk for a job well done Newsmax, by Greg Kelly,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Trump suggested in a post on social media at 3 ET that Cheney could face legal consequences based on evidence gathered by the GOP subcommittee.

House Administration Committee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, wrote, “Until we hold those responsible accountable and reform our institutions, we will not fully regain trust.”

The panel Republicans’ 128-page preliminary report arrives as Trump prepares for his return to the White House and works to staff his administration with top-level officials, including Kash Patel as FBI director, who seem like-minded in his pursuit of retaliation. Trump has also promised to pardon people convicted of roles in the Capitol riots.

It reviews longstanding Republican arguments that Trump is not to blame for the attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department has prosecuted about 1,500 people, including the leaders of the militant Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and indicted Trump on four criminal charges, including conspiracy to overturn the election. Special counsel Jack Smith has since dropped the case against Trump ahead of the inauguration in compliance with Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

But the new report’s conclusion singles out Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, herself once a rising conservative star who was kicked out of the GOP leadership after her vote to impeach Trump for fueling the insurgency. When she became vice chair of the committee on Jan. 6, Cheney lost her own re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger in Wyoming in 2022. Last fall, Cheney worked to prevent Trump from returning to the White House after campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Cheney on Tuesday delivered a detailed defense of her committee’s painstaking work, the 900-page Jan. 6 report released in December 2022, saying Loudermilk’s own report “disregards the truth.”

“On January 6, Donald Trump showed who he really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” Cheney said in a statement.

“Now Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘interim report’ willfully ignores the truth and the Select Committee’s overwhelming weight of evidence and instead concocts lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”

President Joe Biden is considering issuing pardons to spare members of Congress and others from Trump’s wrath. But several of the people involved have said they are not seeking or wanting a pardon from Biden.

Among those Trump wants prosecuted are Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the Democratic House, Cheney and other members of the committee on January 6, as well as Smith, the DOJ special counsel who indicted Trump.

The report’s release comes at a timely moment, when Congress will be asked in the coming weeks to certify the results of the 2024 election. But unlike four years ago, when Republicans refused to accept Biden’s victory over Trump, alleging voter fraud, Democrats say , that they trust and accept the election results.

The GOP panel’s findings review the many security failures on Jan. 6, 2021, and reignite controversy over the delay in calling in the National Guard, which along with police reinforcements restored order to the Capitol by nightfall. Congress returned to work that night and worked into the next morning to confirm the 2020 election for Biden.

“This report reveals that there was not just one reason for what happened at the US Capitol on January 6,” Loudermilk wrote in an introduction. “The Capitol is no safer today.”

But Loudermilk focuses just as intently on the Jan. 6 committee that then-Speaker Pelosi set up in the aftermath to investigate what happened and its leaders, Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, and Cheney.

The report names Cheney for prosecution for her role in working with one of the star witnesses against Trump, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided some of the most detailed descriptions of the defeated president’s actions that day.

Hutchinson had testified before the committee on January 6, 2022, hearing that she had not been forthcoming during her initial interviews with the panel and had a “moral struggle” and wanted to return.

She eventually left her Trump-aligned lawyer and later held a grand public hearing describing Trump in the White House as the Capitol riot unfolded.

Cheney, in his own account in his book “Oath and Honor” of the committee’s work, had been instrumental in meeting with Cassidy and concerned for her safety when she decided to come forward.

Loudermilk’s panel concludes that these actions constitute witness tampering and grounds for prosecution.

“Numerous federal laws were likely violated by Liz Cheney,” the committee wrote in its conclusion. “These violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

It also says Thompson broke House rules in handling files and transcripts.

Thompson said the report was filled with “baseless” allegations. “There is no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the deadly attack on January 6, no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would love to rewrite history,” he said.

Trump, in an interview earlier this month, reiterated his campaign promises to go after those who blamed him for Jan. 6.

“Frankly, they should go to jail,” referring to members of Congress who investigated the Capitol attack.