Former Representative Liz Cheney on Sunday called President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat to imprison her and other members of a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”
Responding to comments Mr. Trump made in an interview aired on Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC, Ms. Cheney said the incoming president “lied about the Jan. 6 select committee” and that there would be “no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis” to prosecute its members.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” she said in a statement. “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.”
She continued: “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.”
Her statement came after Mr. Trump repeated his unfounded allegation that the committee destroyed evidence during its 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,” he said, referring to Representative Bennie G. Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the committee’s chairman. “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.”
He went on: “And Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
In fact, the committee did not destroy all evidence. It released an 800-page report as well as 140 transcripts of testimony and various memos, emails and voice mail messages. The evidence remains online. Mr. Thompson explained in a letter last year that the committee had asked the executive branch to go through some material first to protect “law enforcement sensitive operational details and private, personal information that, if released, could endanger the safety of witnesses.”
Ms. Cheney pointed to that letter in her statement on Sunday. “Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson,” she said. “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.”
President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons before leaving office to people targeted by Mr. Trump like Ms. Cheney as part of the president-elect’s promised “retribution” against his foes. Ms. Cheney did not say in her statement whether she would accept such a pardon to protect herself from a politically motivated prosecution by the next administration.
But she said that the evidence that should be made public was the material gathered by the special counsel Jack Smith in his investigation of Mr. Trump’s role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. “The Justice Department should ensure that all that material is preserved and cannot be destroyed. As much of that information as possible should be disclosed in the special counsel’s upcoming report.”
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