Cheney vows House January 6 committee ‘won’t be intimidated’ after RNC censure for her involvement
By Simret Aklilu, CNN
Rep. Liz Cheney on Thursday hit back at critics of the House select committee investigating January 6, saying the panel will move ahead with its investigation of the US Capitol attack regardless of criticism or intimidation attempts.
Cheney, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday, vowed that the committee, of which she is vice chair, “will demonstrate in hearings later this year, no foreign power corrupted America’s voting machines, and no massive secret fraud changed the election outcome.”
“Those who do not wish the truth of Jan. 6 to come out have predictably resorted to attacking the process—claiming it is tainted and political,” the Wyoming Republican wrote. “Our hearings will show this charge to be wrong. We are focused on facts, not rhetoric, and we will present those facts without exaggeration, no matter what criticism we face.”
Cheney’s piece follows a resolution from the Republican National Committee last week that formally censured her and fellow GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for serving on the House select committee with Democrats. Though she did not address the RNC’s decision to refer to that day as “legitimate political discourse” in the resolution, the congresswoman said in her op-ed that the probe “isn’t only about the inexcusable violence of that day: It is also about fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, and whether elected representatives believe in those things or not.”
The resolution has split the party, with some Republicans viewing the effort to punish Cheney and Kinzinger — along with language interpreted as a way to whitewash the deadly attack — as an unforced error over a divide the party has long sought to paper over: former President Donald Trump and his role in inciting the mob that stormed the US Capitol.
Cheney on Thursday doubled down on her criticism of Trump and his influence on the GOP, arguing that his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election caused dramatic changes within the party — and eventually led to the insurrection.
“Republicans used to advocate fidelity to the rule of law and the plain text of the Constitution,” she wrote. “In 2020, Mr. Trump convinced many to abandon those principles. He falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him because of widespread fraud. While some degree of fraud occurs in every election, there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed this one.”
“Almost all members of Congress know this—although many lack the courage to say it out loud,” she continued.
Cheney also made reference to former Vice President Mike Pence’s recent remarks that “President Trump is wrong” in claiming that Pence had the right to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021.
“What Mr. Trump had insisted that Mr. Pence do on Jan. 6 was not only un-American, it was unconstitutional and illegal,” she wrote.
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