After betraying her own party to join House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s inquisition into the Jan. 6, pro-Trump revolt at the US Capitol, disgraced ex-Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming doubled down by attacking fellow Republicans, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Prior to the committee’s first hearing on Tuesday, Cheney made the rounds on two morning shows—ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS This Morning—to defend her involvement while throwing congressional colleagues under the bus.
“We cannot be a party that embraces the Big Lie,” she said on CBS, repeating a frequent leftist talking point borrowed from Adolf Hitler.
While Cheney reiterated Pelosi’s claims that the panel would not be a partisan witch hunt—due largely to the presence of herself and RINO Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois—the interviews made clear that Cheney’s role would be anything but impartial.
Both she and Kinzinger were among the 10 anti-Trump Republicans who sided with Democrats to impeach former President Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of the uprising.
“We have to tell our voters the truth, and we have to stand for principles and substance and engage in those battles that way,” Cheney said. “You know, the partisan attacks that are coming right now, they’re really childish and they really do reflect a lack of—either a lack of understanding or an attempt to cover up what happened that day and why it’s so important for us to get to the bottom of it.”
Cheney suggested Pelosi had rejected Jordan from the committee not because of petty partisan politics, but because he may be called to testify.
“He’s somebody who was involved in a number of meetings in the lead-up to what happened on Jan. 6, involved in planning for Jan 6, certainly for the objections that day as he said publicly, so he may well be a material witness,” Cheney told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
On the day of the demonstration, Cheney, herself, reportedly accused Jordan of inciting the mostly peaceful mass gathering, during which one person—Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt—was killed by Capitol Police. Three others in the crowd of thousands also died of natural causes.
“Get away from me, you did this,” Cheney told Jordan, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters.
But after Pelosi last week rejected the committee appointments for Jordan and Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., claiming that they were too deeply involved, some Republicans argued that Pelosi, who was in charge of the Capitol Police and responsible for maintaining security of the building, also would be a germane witness.
Cheney, meanwhile, kept open the possibility that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Trump, himself, may be subpoenaed as part of the Democrats’ inquisition.
“Look, I think that the American people, as I said, deserve to know what happened every minute of that day,” she told Stephanopoulos.
“They deserve to know about every phone call that was made in and out of the White House, every meeting, every discussion that was had that day in the White House as the Capitol building was under attack,” she continued. “And so, the committee will go wherever it needs to go to get to the facts.”
CBS interviewer Gayle King asked Cheney if her Republican colleagues had “selective amnesia” for their refusal to participate in the show-trial, which Democrats may seek to use as a political bludgeon in the run up to the 2022 midterm election.
Cheney took the bait.
“You know, you’d have to ask them, Gayle,” she said. “I just think that it’s not worthy of these offices that we hold.”
Cheney claimed her participation on the panel—which gave Pelosi the quorum she needed to continue, as well as feeding her the plausible deniability of “bipartisanship”—was really about putting politics aside.
She said it was necessary for both sides to unite in order to ensure that the ruling elite was never again placed in mild danger or imminent inconvenience as the result of a popular uprising about a stolen election taking over a public space like the taxpayer-funded Capitol building.
“I think that some things must be above politics and getting to the bottom of what happened on Jan. 6, making sure that the American people have all of the details of what led to that attack and what happened on that day, doing everything we need to do to preserve and protect the Constitution, the rule of law, to ensure that that kind of attack never happens again and that the people who did it are held accountable,” Cheney said.
“Those are things that have to be above politics and have to be above partisanship,” she continued. “I believe my duty and my oath to the Constitution is very clear, and I think that we all have to play a role in making sure this never happens again.”
