A report published on Tuesday by Republican leaders provided a scathing critique of the “deficiencies and politicization” of the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Committee and urged a criminal probe into former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent figure on the panel.
“Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar Select Committee served as a political tool aimed solely at misleading the public into attributing the January 6 violence to President Trump while undermining his first presidential legacy,” asserted the Republicans in their 128-page report.
Along with the suggestion that the FBI initiate an investigation into Cheney’s conduct, the report accused her of witness tampering due to her communication with former White House aide and committee testifier Cassidy Hutchinson.
In response, Cheney promptly rejected the assertions made in the report, labeling them as “falsehoods” and attacking President-elect Donald Trump as a “cruel and vindictive” individual.
“January 6th revealed Donald Trump for who he truly is,” Cheney stated. “He chose to watch television instead of demanding his followers stand down and disperse for hours.”
Commenting on the interim report led by Chairman Barry Loudermilk from Georgia, Cheney remarked that it “deliberately ignores the truth” and the “overwhelming evidence.”
On the contrary, the extensive report “concocts falsehoods and defamatory claims to obfuscate Donald Trump’s actions,” noted Cheney. “Their claims do not correspond with the actual evidence and constitute a cowardly and malicious attack on the truth. No credible attorney, legislator, or judge would take this seriously.”
Trump has repeatedly indicated that the members of the House Jan. 6 panel should “serve jail time.”
Over the weekend, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders emerged as one of the highest-ranking Democratic officials to propose that President Joe Biden should consider preemptively pardoning panel members to shield them from potential legal action by Trump.
When questioned about the matter of preemptive pardons for committee members during a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders remarked: “Well, I believe he ought to think about that quite seriously.”
The members of the House Jan. 6 Committee included seven House Democrats and two House Republicans, former Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from Illinois.
