WASHINGTON — The lawmaker leading Republicans’ counter-investigation into the House Jan. 6 committee said former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) should face a criminal investigation over her committee work.
In a report published Tuesday, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, said Cheney may have illegally tampered with a witness and encouraged that witness to commit perjury.
“Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the report says in its conclusion.
Cheney served as vice chair of the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a bipartisan investigative panel that produced a final report blaming President-elect Donald Trump for inciting the attack, laying out his broader efforts to undo the 2020 election result, and prodding the Justice Department to bring federal charges.
The wrongdoing accusation outlined in Tuesday’s report centers on Cheney’s interaction with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who alleged in public testimony before the Jan. 6 committee that she was told Trump so wanted to accompany his supporters at the U.S. Capitol that he lunged at a member of his security detail. Trump’s driver that day, however, disputed Hutchinson’s second-hand account, according to Jan. 6 committee testimony previously disclosed by Loudermilk.
Loudermilk’s report claims Cheney improperly interfered with Hutchinson’s relationship with her attorney, Stefan Passantino, causing her to alter her testimony after having spoken to the committee twice.
“It is no surprise that the claims made in Hutchinson’s first two sworn interviews vary substantially from the claims she made following Representative Cheney’s direct intervention,” the report says.
As Hutchinson said in a transcribed interview with the committee, however, her Trump-aligned attorney had discouraged her from offering candid testimony while promising lucrative jobs.
“The less you remember, the better,” Hutchinson said Passantino told her. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world.”
Hutchinson testified to the Jan. 6 committee that she believed Passantino’s advice would lead her to commit a crime by making false statements to the committee, and that her breaking point came when she said Passantino told her to stop cooperating with the committee altogether. Loudermilk’s report said the Jan. 6 committee “manufactured the story” that Hutchinson told in her own words about her lawyer.
Whether the Justice Department goes after Cheney will be an early test of whether Republicans and Trump will seek “retribution” against Trump’s political opponents. The president-elect said earlier this month that Cheney and other members of the committee “should go to jail.” Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, has said in the past he would use the government to “go after” Trump’s enemies in government and the media. Trump has drawn on Loudermilk’s work in his fulminations against the Jan. 6 committee, so the Georgia Republican’s material on Cheney could get significant attention from the incoming president.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who was a member of the Jan. 6 committee, suggested Tuesday that Loudermilk’s criminal referral will hit a brick wall. She noted that members of Congress can’t be prosecuted for doing their official duties per Article I, section 6 of the U.S. Constitution.
“The idea that legislative activity would be the subject of a criminal investigation is unconstitutional,” Lofgren told HuffPost.
Loudermilk’s recommendation for a criminal investigation mirrors the Jan. 6 committee’s recommendation that Passantino face charges for interfering with a witness. Loudermilk’s work has always had a small element of payback ― former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) put Loudermilk in charge of the counter-investigation after the Jan. 6 committee dubiously suggested Loudermilk led Jan. 6 rioters on a reconnaissance tour of the Capitol basement, an insinuation Capitol Police said was untrue. His subcommittee’s reports have argued it wasn’t actually Trump’s fault that a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.
As for retribution in Trump’s second term, several Senate Republicans told HuffPost last week that they did not expect Patel to follow through on his past pledge to go after Trump’s enemies. And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday he didn’t think members of the Jan. 6 committee should go to jail. But it won’t be up to them.