Two weeks ago, as speculation intensified about President Joe Biden protecting potential GOP targets with pre-emptive pardons, Republican Rep. Dan Meuser appeared on Newsmax and derided the discussion as “nonsense.” The Pennsylvanian quickly explained why such pardons would be entirely unnecessary.
“Nobody’s going to be going after Liz Cheney,” Meuser said, referring to the former House Republican Conference chair who helped lead the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee. He made the comment in such a way as to suggest the very idea was absurd.
Two weeks later, as NBC News reported, one of Meuser’s colleagues declared that the FBI should investigate Cheney as a result of her work on the Jan. 6 panel:
“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,” said an interim report released by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who chairs the House Administration’s oversight subcommittee, which investigated the Jan. 6 select committee.
The report specifically alleged that House Republicans, as part of their investigation into the Jan. 6 investigation, found evidence showing Cheney “tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without her attorney’s knowledge.”
Before we dig in on this, let’s briefly review how we arrived at this unusually ludicrous point.
As 2023 got underway, and the new Republican majority in the House got to work, among the earliest priorities for the party was a new, GOP-friendly investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. The endeavor would be led by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, in his capacity as the chair of the House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight, who faced some awkward questions about a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot.
After launching his own Jan. 6 probe, among the Georgia Republican’s first steps was exonerating himself.
In the months that followed, Loudermilk said he intended to determine “what really happened” on Jan. 6, indifferent to the fact that we already know what really happened.
This seemed to come to a head nine months ago, when Loudermilk released his findings, and it landed with a thud: The GOP congressman and his oversight subcommittee colleagues made a handful of underwhelming claims, and by any fair measure, there was no there there.
Those same House Republicans nevertheless kept going — and this week concluded that Cheney “likely” broke “numerous” laws.
That is not a claim to be taken seriously. The Washington Post published an analysis that explained why the allegations “are even thinner than you think” — and they’re largely a rehash of unimportant information that we already knew.
And yet, Donald Trump nevertheless seized on Loudermilk’s findings, celebrated the Georgian’s report, and declared by way of his social media platform that Cheney “could be in a lot of trouble.” The online missive came on the heels of Trump’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in which the president-elect said Cheney and her colleagues on the Jan. 6 panel “should go to jail.”
And that’s ultimately what makes this story so notable. It’s easy to brush off baseless claims from a subcommittee, but the broader political context matters: We’ll soon have a new president hellbent on retaliating against his perceived enemies, and the former Wyoming congresswoman is a foe Trump seems to enjoy hating. This is the same president-elect, of course, who not only spent his first term trying to weaponize federal law enforcement, but who also intends to put sycophantic partisans in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI. The New York Times published a related analysis following Loudermilk’s claims, adding, “For years, President-elect Donald J. Trump has made it known that people he believes to be his enemies should be prosecuted. This week, his allies in Congress laid out a template for how to go after one of them in particular: Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming representative who has been a focus of Mr. Trump’s anger.” So much for “nobody’s going to be going after Liz Cheney.” For her part, the former House GOP Conference chair responded to the allegations in a statement that said Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.” Cheney added, “Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.” As for Hutchinson, her lawyer, William H. Jordan, said in a statement that the allegations that Hutchinson colluded with Cheney “are preposterous.” He’s right, though it’s an open question whether that would matter to Trump-aligned law enforcement officials in 2025. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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