After investigating Jan. 6, House GOP sides with Trump and goes after Liz Cheney
CTV
Wrapping up their own investigation on the Jan. 6 2021 Capitol attack, House Republicans have concluded it's former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney who should be prosecuted for probing what happened when then-President Donald Trump sent his mob of supporters as Congress was certifying the 2020 election.
Wrapping up their own investigation on the Jan. 6 2021 Capitol attack, House Republicans have concluded it's former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney who should be prosecuted for probing what happened when then-President Donald Trump sent his mob of supporters as Congress was certifying the 2020 election.
The findings issued Tuesday show the Republican Party working to reinforce Trump's desire to punish his perceived enemies including Cheney and members of the Jan. 6 committee that the president-elect has said should be in jail.
House Administration Committee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., wrote, “Until we hold accountable those responsible, and reform our institutions, we will not fully regain trust.”
The panel Republicans' 128-page interim report arrives as Trump is preparing his return to the White House and working to staff his administration with officials at the highest levels, including Kash Patel as FBI Director, who appear like-minded in his efforts at retribution. Trump also vows to pardon people who were convicted for roles in the riot at the Capitol.
It revisits long-running Republican arguments that Trump is not to blame for the attack on the Capitol. The Department of Justice has prosecuted some 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 abandoned the case against Trump ahead of the inauguration in adherence to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be charged.
But the new report's conclusion singles out Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, and herself once a rising conservative star who was kicked out of GOP leadership after her vote to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection. Once she became vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney lost her own reelection to a Trump-backed challenger in Wyoming. By fall, Cheney was working to stop Trump from returning to the White House, having campaigned 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, and said Loudermilk’s own report “disregards the truth.”