Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney, Vice Chair of the House Select Committee investigating Trump’s insurrection: NAJ screen shot

Analysis –
By Glynn Wilson –

Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who helped lead a Congressional investigation into the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, called President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to imprison her and other members of the select House committee an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Responding to comments Trump made in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” 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.”

“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” she said, adding that “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 Trump repeated his unfounded allegation that the committee destroyed evidence during its investigation, according to the New York Times.

“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 Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman. “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.”

“And Cheney was behind it,” he said, lying on national television. “And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”

In fact, according to the Times, the committee did not destroy any evidence. According to our own reporting, Cheney did insist on framing the 800-page report as a defense of Capitol and Metro police, calling them heroes for saving democracy, while down playing the role some officers played in helping the mob get onto the Capitol grounds and into the building.

They were all allowed to leave at the time. None were arrested, even the ones who assaulted police officers, until Biden was sworn in and the Justice Department launched an investigation to find and charge the suspects, put them on trial, and lock them up in federal prison. Trump is now threatening to undermine that entire process.

The report also includes 140 transcripts of testimony, memos, emails and voice mail messages, and called for the Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against Trump.

House Select Committee Unanimously Recommends Criminal Charges Against Donald Trump

President Joe Biden’s pick for Attorney General Merrick Garland drug his feat for months, however, and the investigation was delayed by the eventual appointment of a special prosecutor, who did finally recommend criminal charges against Trump. But by then Trump was already running for president as the Republican Party’s nominee, and the Supreme Court got involved and ruled that Trump had some limited immunity against being prosecuted for acts he committed as president.

Prosecution Brief Shows Trump Should be on Trial, Not Running for President

The House committee’s report and evidence remains online, although special counsel Jack Smith has resigned and Trump’s criminal trial has dropped off the federal court calendar, since judicial officials figure Trump will appoint a new attorney general once he is sworn in on Jan. 20 who will order all charges dropped.

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.”

Cheney cited 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 Trump like Cheney as part of the president-elect’s promised “retribution” against his political enemies. Cheney did not say in her statement whether she would accept such a pardon to protect herself from a politically motivated prosecution. But she said that the evidence that should be made public was the material gathered by special counsel Jack Smith in his investigation of 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,” she said. “As much of that information as possible should be disclosed in the special counsel’s upcoming report.”

The Danger of Trump Attacking American Intelligence

In another response to Trump’s comments on NBC, U.S. intelligence agency officials are warning the American people about threats to American national security by actions Trump is promising to take against the federal government.

In a guest column that also appeared in the New York Times, former intelligence officials are sending up a red flag about Trump’s promises to destroy what he calls the “deep state,” which is simply the professional civil service that runs all the federal agencies. Thousands of these people not only live in Washington, D.C. Most of them live in nearby Virginia and Maryland.

“The sentiment raises fears in the intelligence community that there will be purges of career professionals, and that intelligence designed to protect American lives will be twisted to fit Mr. Trump’s personal interests,” they write.

“During his first term, Mr. Trump believed he was undermined by public servants in the national security apparatus and vowed to appoint officials in his next administration who would shatter any resistance to his will and carry out his plans without question,” they say. “The Project 2025 blueprint for the intelligence community offers little clarity into what Mr. Trump might have in store for the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., as it is limited to cataloging a litany of misperceptions about the agencies and grievances against individuals…

“It is still unclear if Mr. Trump’s attacks on intelligence institutions are part of a scheme to expand presidential power or are a more visceral and scattershot assault on agencies he believed were disloyal during his first term. Will Mr. Trump be satisfied with servile leadership managing a functioning bureaucracy? Or is he seeking to dismantle the system of checks and balances and make executive agencies directly responsive to his personal demands? At minimum we can predict chaos, incompetence and a move toward cronyism, wherein people like Elon Musk potentially misuse intelligence for personal or commercial benefit.”

Trump Promises to Pardon Attackers, Deport Millions of Immigrants

In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since winning re-election, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to pardon Capitol attackers and to try to end automatic citizenship for children of immigrants, according to the Times.

In responding to questions, Trump outlined an aggressive plan for opening his second term and vowed to move immediately to crack down on immigration and pardon his most violent supporters while threatening to lock up political foes like Liz Cheney. Trump said that on Day 1 of his new administration next month, he would extend clemency to the hundreds of his backers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and try to bar automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents.

Without giving a time frame, Trump also indicated that he would fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, who is operating under a 10 year union contract, out of personal pique because “he invaded my home” and was insufficiently certain at first whether Trump’s wound during an assassination attempt this year was caused by a bullet or shrapnel.

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