Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
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Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
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Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.
Key events
In his weekend interview with NBC News where he said members of the January 6 committee should be jailed, Donald Trump also made clear that he planned to stick with his promise to pardon those charged over the attack on the Capitol. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:
In his first sit-down television news interview since winning a second presidency in November’s election, Donald Trump renewed promises to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the US Capitol in early 2021.
He also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs in the conversation with NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker – the latter of which he acknowledged could cause Americans to pay more after riding voters’ complaints about higher prices back to the White House at the expense of Vice-President Kamala Harris.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very nasty system”.
“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May by New York state prosecutors of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “The system’s a very corrupt system.”
Trump said there may be some exceptions to his pardons over an attack on the Capitol that was meant to keep him in the Oval Office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – and which was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. He referenced previously debunked claims of anti-Trump law enforcement infiltrating his supporters’ ranks and agitating the attack.
Yesterday on CNN, the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin was asked for his thoughts on Donald Trump’s comments about prosecuting members of the January 6 committee.
He said the now-shuttered House investigation was worthy of investigation, and repeated Trump’s factually dubious assertions that they destroyed evidence, but stopped short of calling for the members’ jailing. “I don’t think they have a reason to be afraid now,” Mullin said. He continued:
I think that investigation should be in looked into if there was criminal activity that took place with the January 6 committee. There was a lot of questions that didn’t get answered. There was a lot of information that was destroyed. Why did they destroy it? Why didn’t they? Why did they refuse to allow a lot of people to testify, or their testimony to actually become public? If the American people want to know that, then maybe we do another hearing.
Adam Schiff, the California senator-elect who served on the January 6 committee during his just-concluded time in the House, responded to Donald Trump’s call for his jailing.
Writing on X, Schiff said:
When Trump violated his oath, I stood up to him. When he tried to overturn the 2020 election, the January 6th Committee stood in defense of our democracy. Threats to jail us will not deter us. Nothing will stop me from doing my duty to the American people.
Liz Cheney says Trump ‘lied about the January 6th select committee’
In his interview with NBC News, Donald Trump said the January 6 committee “deleted and destroyed all evidence”, before insisting he was not responsible for the violent attack on the Capitol.
“And Cheney was behind it. And so was [Democratic chair] Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.
The committee’s report and its evidence remains publicly available, and Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman who served as the body’s vice-chair, said in a statement that Trump was not telling the truth about its work:
This morning, President-elect Trump again lied about the January 6th Select Committee, and said members of the Committee ‘should go to jail’ for carrying out our constitutional responsibilities. Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. 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. 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.
Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson in this July 2023 letter. 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.
Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
-
Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
-
Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
-
Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.
2024-12-09 14:06:38
