House GOP panel calls for Liz Cheney investigation for ‘criminal witness tampering’

WASHINGTON — A House Republican-led panel on Tuesday called for a federal criminal investigation into former Rep. Liz Cheney over possible “witness tampering” with a key witness while she served as vice chairman of the now-dissolved House special committee that investigated the 2021 insurrection case Capitol.

Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Cassidy Hutchinson, a first-term White House adviser to then-President Donald Trump, communicated on the encrypted Signal app before their explosive and later largely debunked public testimony in June 2022, according to previously published reports Documents show Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Citing those communications, the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee released an interim report Tuesday calling on the Justice Department to investigate Cheney as Trump prepares to retake the White House.

“Evidence uncovered by the subcommittee showed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without the knowledge of Hutchinson’s attorney,” said the report by Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). .

“This secret communication with a witness is inappropriate and likely violates 18 USC 1512. Such action is outside the proper functioning of the legislative process and therefore is not protected by the Speech and Debate Clause.”

Records released in October by the same committee revealed that Cheney and Hutchinson used the Signal app to exchange messages and arrange calls through the app, which is used by Washington journalists and politicians for their end-to-end encryption, the prevents interception by authorities.

The contents of the voice calls are unknown, but one message showed Hutchinson handing Cheney a screenshot of her then-lawyer Stefan Passantino suggesting she not cooperate with the panel investigating Trump’s role in the mob attack by his supporters that overturned the election results of 2020 contested.

Hutchinson was in the middle of six transcribed interviews with the select committee and her communication with Cheney on June 6, 2022, which preceded her dramatic public testimony 22 days later.

Much of what Hutchinson later testified publicly was questioned by other witnesses – most notably her testimony that Trump was so angry when Secret Service agents refused to take his motorcade to the Capitol on the day of the attack that he “stormed “. ” for the steering wheel.

Photos showed that Hutchinson misidentified the vehicle in which the alleged encounter occurred, and the driver later denied that this was true.

“Cassidy Hutchinson’s most egregious claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee knew her claims were false when they publicly promoted them,” Loudermilk said in a news release.

“President Trump did not attack his intelligence division at any point on January 6th. President Trump had no information indicating violence on the morning of January 6th. “Cassidy Hutchinson falsely claimed to have written a handwritten note for President Trump on January 6th,” he wrote.

“Based on new information about her communications, former Rep. Liz Cheney should be investigated for possible witness tampering.”

Cheney, the former No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, returned fire Tuesday afternoon, accusing Loudermilk of “lies and defamatory accusations.”

“January 6 showed Donald Trump who (he) really is – a cruel and vengeful man who allowed violent attacks against our Capitol and law enforcement officers to continue while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and to leave,” Cheney said.

“The January 6 committee hearings and report featured numerous Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, his campaign and his administration. “All of these statements were carefully recorded in thousands of pages of transcripts and released alongside a very detailed and carefully compiled 800-page report,” Cheney continued.

“Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘interim report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the select committee’s enormous burden of evidence and instead fabricates lies and defamatory accusations to cover up what Donald Trump has done. Your claims do not reflect a review of the actual evidence and are a malicious and cowardly attack on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”

The panel’s recommendation carries no weight of its own and it is unclear whether Trump’s nominees to lead the Justice Department are likely to act on the recommendation.

Trump, 78, has named former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead the Justice Department and former adviser Kash Patel as FBI director.

Trump and Cheney clashed over foreign policy issues during his first term, and he called for her expulsion from Congress in his speech before the riot, citing that she had prevented him from withdrawing troops from war zones.

“In a year you will start working in Congress and we need to get rid of the weak members of Congress, the ones who are no good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. “We have to get rid of them,” Trump said before thousands of his supporters stormed the Capitol.

“You know, she never wants a soldier brought home – I’ve brought a lot of our soldiers home… They’re in countries that nobody knows the name of, nobody knows where they are. They die. They’re great, but they’re dying. They lose their arms, their legs, their face.”

Trump supported now-Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming to unseat Cheney in the 2022 midterm elections. In return, Cheney and her father – former Vice President Dick Cheney – supported Vice President Kamala Harris in her failed campaign against Trump this year.