Trump praises House GOP demanding investigation of Liz Cheney

Donald Trump is not yet in office, but his not-so-slow-rolling train of political retaliation against his rivals has already left the station. After filing a lawsuit against an Iowa newspaper over its poll showing Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa, the president-elect has now authorized an FBI investigation into former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on her work in the House Committee on January 6.

“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 wrote early Wednesday morning on Truth Social.

On Tuesday, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, a preliminary report on the GOP’s cross-examination of the Jan. 6 committee’s bipartisan investigation, which recommended criminal charges against Trump for his investigation. involvement in efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

High milk accused Cheney of having “collaborated with ‘star witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson,” and recommended that she be “investigated for potential criminal witness tampering” as a result.

Hutchinson — a former White House aide in the Trump administration — testified under oath to the committee that her Trump-affiliated lawyer, Stefan Passantino, advised her to mislead the committee about her recollection of events leading up to and on January 6 . Hutchinson ultimately fired Passantino days before her public testimony.

In a statement responding to Loudermilk, Cheney wrote that the interim report accusing her of witness tampering “willfully ignores the truth and the Select Committee’s overwhelming weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up over what Donald Trump did. Their claims do not reflect a review of the actual evidence and are a malicious and cowardly attack on the truth.”

“No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously,” she added.

But reputable lawyers aren’t the ones who can decide how to proceed under Trump’s second administration. Trump’s nominees to lead the Justice Department and the FBI — Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, respectively — are staunch Trump loyalists who have openly expressed a desire to use federal enforcement agencies as a means of punishing Trump’s opponents and critics.

In 2023, Bondi told Fox News that “the investigators will be investigated (…) because the deep state – the last term of President Trump – they hid in the shadows. But now they have a spot on them and they can all be investigated and the house must be cleaned out.”

Patel, Trump’s FBI nominee, described Cheney as the “principal architect” of alleged misinformation spread by the committee on Jan. 6 in his book government thugs, which included a list of 60 other so-called “deep state” agents he believed needed to be rooted out from public life.

A loyalist, Patel may take his marching orders directly from Trump. Earlier this month, the president chose told NBC News: “For what they did, frankly,” the lawmakers who sat in committee on Jan. 6, “should be in jail.”