Former Representative Liz Cheney responded strongly Tuesday after a Republican-led House subcommittee released a report recommending she be investigated for “potential criminal witness tampering” related to her work on the January 6 House Select Committee. The report, issued by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, alleges Cheney improperly coordinated with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness in the committee’s investigation of the January 6 Capitol breach.
Loudermilk’s findings suggest the former Republican lawmaker from Wyoming who turned against Donald Trump acted without Hutchinson’s attorney’s consent, raising concerns about the integrity of Cheney’s handling of the investigation. Cheney, who served as vice chair of the now-disbanded January 6 Committee, dismissed the allegations as a political attack aimed at protecting President-elect Donald Trump and discrediting the committee’s findings. However, critics have pointed to Cheney’s prominent role in promoting Hutchinson’s questionable testimony.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Cheney defended her former committee’s investigative efforts but decried Loudermilk’s report, claiming it “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence.” She added: “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.”
“The January 6th Committee’s hearings and report featured scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration,” she 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.”
“Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ 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,” Cheney added. “Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
The full report accuses Cheney of, manipulating evidence, politicizing the committee against Trump, and promoting “false claims” from Hutchinson, whose dramatic testimony in June 2022 alleged that the then-45th president tried to grab the steering wheel of a Secret Service vehicle in an attempt to join his supporters at the Capitol and was aware of the potential for violence. No evidence was found to support her claim and in fact, Secret Service members refuted it entirely.