WASHINGTON — Ending its own investigation into the case January 6, 2021. Attack on the CapitolRepublicans in the House of Representatives concluded that he was a former GOP lawmaker. Liz Cheney who should be prosecuted for investigating what happened under the then president Donald Trump sent his mob of supporters as Congress certified the 2020 elections.
Findings released Tuesday show the Republican Party is working to strengthen Trump’s willingness to punish his perceived enemies, including Cheney and members of the Jan. 6 commission the president-elect said he should be in jail.
House Administration Committee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., wrote: “Until we hold those responsible accountable and reform our institutions, we will not fully regain trust.”
The Republican panel’s 128-page interim report comes as Trump prepares to return to the White House and works to staff your administration with top-level officials, including Kash Patel as FBI Directorwho seem to be like-minded in their revenge efforts. Trump also vows to pardon people convicted of participating in the Capitol riot.
It returns to long-standing Republican arguments that Trump is not to blame for the attack on the Capitol. The Department of Justice has brought charges against approximately 1,500 people including leaders of the militant Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and charged Trump with four criminal countsincluding a conspiracy to overturn the election. Since then, special legal counsel Jack Smith (*6*)he abandoned the case against Trump before the inauguration, in line with Justice Department guidelines that say sitting presidents cannot be charged.
But the modern report’s findings single out Cheney, the former vice president’s daughter, and herself once a rising star of conservatism who was kicked out of the GOP leadership after she voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. When she became vice chair of the commission on January 6, Cheney lost her own re-election to a Trump-backed challenger in Wyoming. In the fall, Cheney, after campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris, sought to keep Trump from returning to the White House.
On Tuesday, Cheney presented a detailed defense of the painstaking work of her committee, the so-called 900 pages The January 6 report, published in December 2022, said the Loudermilk report “disregards the truth.”
“January 6 showed Donald Trump who he truly is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed brutal attacks on our Capitol and law enforcement officers to continue 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 disregards the truth and the enormous weight of the Select Committee’s evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump has done.”
President Joe Biden is considering granting a pardon to spare members of Congress and others the wrath of Trump. However, several people involved have said they are not seeking or wanting a pardon from Biden.
Among the people Trump wants to prosecute are Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Cheney and other members of the Jan. 6 committee, as well as Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who prosecuted Trump.
The report’s release comes at an opportune time as Congress will be asked in the coming weeks to certify the 2024 election results. But unlike four years ago, when Republicans refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory over Trump and claimed voter fraud, Democrats say they trust election results and accept them.
The GOP panel’s findings revisit multiple security lapses that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, and revive a dispute over delays in calling in the National Guard, which, along with police reinforcements, restored order at the Capitol before nightfall. Congress returned to work that evening and worked through the next morning to certify Biden’s 2020 election.
“This report shows that there was not just one cause for what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6,” Loudermilk wrote in the foreword. “The Capitol is no safer today.”
But Loudermilk focuses equally on the January 6 commission, in the wake of which then-Speaker Pelosi rose to investigate what happened, and its leaders, Speaker Bennie Thompson, Miss D and Cheney.
The report indicated that Cheney is facing impeachment for her role in cooperating with one of the key witnesses against Trump, a former teenage White House adviser, Cassidy Hutchinsonwho provided some of the most detailed accounts of the defeated president’s actions that day.
Hutchinson testified before the committee on January 6, 2022, that she did not show up for her initial interviews with the panel, was in a “moral battle” and wanted to return.
She eventually dropped a Trump-aligned lawyer and later held an extremely emotional public hearing in which she described Trump in the White House during the Capitol riot.
Cheney, as she described the committee’s work in her book “Oath and Honor”, played a key role in meeting Cassidy and was concerned for her safety when deciding to come forward.
The Loudermilk panel finds that these actions constitute witness tampering and are grounds for prosecution.
“Liz Cheney likely violated numerous federal laws,” the commission said in its summary. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation should investigate these violations.”
It also says Thompson violated House rules regarding the handling of records and transcripts.
Thompson said the report contained “unsubstantiated” allegations. “There is no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the deadly January 6 attack, no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would like to rewrite history,” he said.
Trump, in an interview earlier this month, renewed his campaign promises to pursue those who blamed him for Jan. 6.
“Frankly, they should go to jail,” referring to members of Congress who investigated the attack on the Capitol.
