Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich criticized the now-defunct House Jan. 6 Committee on Friday, stating that its findings were based on a “false product” and urging Congress to disavow its activities.
The Jan. 6 panel was an investigative committee established by the then-Democratic-controlled House to examine the events leading up to and including the disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on that date. The committee included only two Republicans, former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, and former Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, both of whom had voted to impeach former President Donald Trump. Also, it was the first time in modern history that the minority party’s leader — then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — was not able to choose his party’s own members, as Pelosi rejected those choices.
“This committee, the J6 committee, was so fraudulent that the current House should repudiate it, define it as an illegal or unethical, runaway investigation of no standing,” Gingrich said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “[A]nd [it] should send a letter to both the Department of Justice and to the appropriate judges, saying that any action based on the J6 committee should be considered null and void and that people like Steve Bannon should not be going to jail because they want to fight with a committee which was literally operating outside the law.”
Both former Trump advisors, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, have been convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the committee. Navarro is currently in custody at a federal prison in Miami, while Bannon has been ordered to report to prison next month.
“I think this is such a tainted and corrupted process,” he also said. “And I think it has to be repealed by the House, and repudiated by the House. And I think that the court and the Justice Department have to take into account that anybody who had a conflict with this committee was dealing with an out of control, illegal operation.”
“Their findings are based on a totally false product,” he said of the panel. “And the people who were subpoenaed by them who refused to agree, we now know, we’re on the right, that in fact, what you have here is a runaway select committee. That was totally dishonest.”
Gingrich targeted Cheney, alleging she was driven by a personal vendetta against the former president, leading her to disregard the law. “I mean, we’ve we’re in a period here where the establishment is just sick. And we have a chance to correct the record historically,” he said. “And I think people will be astonished at how bad Cheney was, how much she broke the rules, and how basically, she wanted to destroy Trump so badly that she didn’t care that in the process, she was breaking the laws.”
“This committee destroyed all of its records. Now. That is, that is totally illegal, because we have others talk about Trump and Biden and their records. While I tell you what the J6 committee did, deliberately and methodically, was 1000 times worse than anything either Trump or Biden had done in terms of records,” he contended. “They did it deliberately. And they did it because they didn’t want other people to figure out what they’ve been doing,” he concluded.