Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has clapped back at President-elect Donald Trump after he threatened to imprison her and other members on the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots.
In an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press that aired Sunday morning, Trump claimed that Cheney, along with a “committee of political thugs” deleted all the evidence from their investigation.
“Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” the President-elect said, referring to Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (the committee’s chairman). “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.”
“Cheney was behind it,” Trump continued. “And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
In a statement reported by The New York Times, Cheney responded to Trump’s claims, describing them as an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said. “He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave.”
“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” she continued. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
The investigation committee released an 845-page report on their findings and evidence in 2022 along with 140 transcripts of testimonies, emails, and voicemail messages. In a letter last year, Thompson disclosed that the committee did have to ask the executive branch to go through some of the investigation’s material first to protect “law enforcement, sensitive operational details, and private, personal information that, if released, could endanger the safety of witnesses.”
In her statement, Cheney addressed Trump’s questioning of the committee’s ethics writing, “Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson.”
“There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting — a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee — and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct,” she added.
