Former President Donald Trump fired back at Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) following her hint of making a criminal referral to the Justice Department against him in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Trump wrote in his Monday post on Truth Social: “Liz Cheney ... keeps saying, over and over again, that HER ... Unselect Committee may recommend CRIMINAL CHARGES against a President of the United States who got more votes than any sitting President in history.”
Cheney said that avoiding such a criminal charge against Trump given his alleged role in last year’s incident would be “a much graver constitutional threat.”
“Ultimately, the Justice Department will decide that. I think we may well as a committee have a view on that and if you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol?” the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel said.
Trump disputed her argument, saying that charges should be instead pressed against those “that cheated on the Election, or those that didn’t properly protect the Capitol.”
The former president further vented his anger on the Jan. 6 Hearing committee in a subsequent post, rebuking that its members are all those who had gone after him in prior political attacks.
“Why doesn’t the highly partisan Unselect Committee ... the same people (all Trump haters & profiteers – books, speeches, etc.) that were involved with Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax # 2, the ‘No Collusion’ Mueller Report and, overall, the GREATEST WITCH HUNT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, go after the people who have been rioting, burning down cities, leading the massive crime wave, & killing many all over the U.S., including drug & human traffickers? No, let’s get ‘Trump’!” Trump said.
During the ABC interview, the Wyoming lawmaker also expressed her trust in Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. She testified that Trump protested in a car when a Secret Service agent told him they would not take him from the site of his speech to the Capitol where people were gathering. Trump then allegedly lunged for the car’s steering wheel and then toward the agent, she told the committee.
Yet, Cheney said that she was “absolutely confident” in Hutchinson’s testimony and called her “an incredibly brave young woman.”
Cheney has drawn the ire from both Trump and her Republican colleagues after she joined 10 GOP lawmakers in the House to vote for the impeachment against the former president back in January 2021.
