What's New
Former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney tore into a report released Tuesday by her former House colleagues, which recommended that she be criminally investigated for examining the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
In a lengthy statement, Cheney said the report contained "defamatory allegations" and that no judge "would take this seriously."
Why It Matters
Tuesday's report comes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to install loyalists in top positions at the Justice Department and the FBI—the agencies responsible for handling congressional requests for criminal investigations—when he takes office in January.
What To Know
U.S. Representative Barry Loudermilk, who chairs the House Administration Oversight subcommittee, released the 128-page interim report, which takes aim at the House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot.
Among other things, House Republicans said that Cheney, who was the vice chairwoman of the January 6 select committee, should be investigated by the FBI over her handling of witnesses.
Cheney responded to Loudermilk and her former colleagues in a fiery statement on Tuesday, saying the report was full of lies and misleading characterizations of the panel's work.
"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's statement said. "The January 6th Committee's hearings and report featured scores of [R]epublican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump's own White House, campaign and Administration."
Cheney continued: "All of this testimony was painstakingly set out in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800 page report. The Department of Justice conducted its own independent investigation and reached the same fundamental conclusions."
Cheney then singled out Loudermilk and the interim report released Tuesday, saying it "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."
"Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth," the statement said. "No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously."
The interim report released by Republicans on Tuesday outlined a number of other complaints the GOP has had about the select committee, including that it didn't have enough Republicans, and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some members that Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was the minority leader at the time, recommended for the panel.
"The Select Committee, with its more than eighteen million dollar budget, resulted in little more than Hollywood-produced political theater and wasted taxpayer dollars to create an error-filled narrative," the report said.
The January 6 select committee released an exhaustive report detailing Trump and his allies' actions leading up to, during, and after the deadly Capitol riot. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and obtained more than 35,000 documents over the course of its investigation
Jack Smith, the special counsel tasked with investigating Trump, relied heavily on the panel's report when his office indicted the president-elect over the Capitol riot.
"In a lot of ways, the committee's work provided this path," Soumya Dayananda, who served as a senior investigator for the House January 6 panel, told the New York Times. "The committee served as educating the country about what the former president did, and this is finally accountability. The congressional committee wasn't going to be able to bring accountability; that was in the hands of the Department of Justice."
What People Are Saying
Representative Bennie Thompson, who chaired the January 6 select committee, said in a statement: "His so-called 'report' is filled with baseless, conclusory allegations rather than facts. That's because there's no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears the responsibility for the deadly January 6th attack no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would love to rewrite history for his political purposes."
Representative Norma Torres, ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee, said in a statement: "Instead of focusing on the pressing safety challenges confronting Members of Congress and Capitol staff, this Subcommittee has spent taxpayer dollars defending the President-elect and spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the January 6th Select Committee."
What Comes Next
Loudermilk reiterated that the report released Tuesday by the House subcommittee was not final.
"We're not calling it a final report because there are still a lot of loose ends," Loudermilk said.
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