On Tuesday, Republicans in the US House of Representatives issued a 128-page interim report on the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. In it, they suggest that “that there was not just one single cause for what happened” on that day but that former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney should be investigated for committing federal crimes.
Democrats and other critics of Donald Trump say the report’s authors are pandering to the incoming president by targeting his most active and forceful critic within the GOP. Trump has argued that Cheney, former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Jack Smith, the Department of Justice special counsel who indicted Trump on charges of election interference, should all be prosecuted for various crimes.
Cheney served as the senior Republican on the January 6 committee, which investigated the riot itself. She also campaigned alongside Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election campaign. And in response to the accusations the GOP lawmakers made against her in their report, she wrote that “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.”
House Republicans say their investigation found substantial evidence that Cheney tampered with one of the witnesses who appeared before the Jan 6 committee, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. “These violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” they asserted in their report.
