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

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wrapping up their 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, which led the Department of Justice to prosecute some 1,500 people including the leaders of the militant Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and indict 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.”

“January 6th showed Donald Trump for 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’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates 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 don’t want pardons from Biden.

Among those Trump wants prosecuted are Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Cheney and others members of the Jan. 6 committee, 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 weeks ahead to confirm the results of the 2024 election. But unlike four years ago, when Republicans refused to accept Biden’s victory over Trump and claimed voter fraud, the Democrats say they trust and accept the election results.

The GOP panel’s findings revisit the multiple security failings on Jan. 6, 2021, and revive the dispute over the lag in calling in the National Guard, which along with police reinforcements, restored order at the Capitol by nightfall. Congress returned to work that evening and worked into the next morning to certify the 2020 election for Biden.

“This report reveals that there was not just one single cause for what happened at the U.S. 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 stood up in the aftermath to investigate what happened, and its leaders Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Cheney.

The report singles out Cheney for prosecution for her role in working with one of the star witnesses against Trump, a former young 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 Jan. 6 committee in 2022 hearing that she had not been forthcoming during her first interviews with the panel and had a “moral struggle” and wanted to return.

She eventually ditched her Trump-aligned lawyer and later delivered a blockbuster public hearing, describing Trump at the White House as the Capitol riot unfolded.

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

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

“Numerous federal laws were likely broken 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 the handling of files and transcripts.

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

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

Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press