Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is under fire from several current and former members of the House Jan. 6 committee for her influence on the panel’s final report and for using the committee as a platform for her political career.
One of only two Republicans on the panel and vice chairwoman Cheney, according to fifteen persons who have worked or are working for the panel who talked to the Washington Post, has been pressing for the upcoming report to concentrate heavily on former president Donald Trump.
Findings unrelated to Trump will either be left out of the final report entirely or consigned to the report’s appendix, such as information on how law enforcement and the intelligence community failed to prevent the January 6 riot, details on how the attack was funded, and findings on militia groups and extremism.
One former committee employee said, “We all came from respectable careers, leaving what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding study that would inform the public.” But many of us lost hope when [the committee] turned into a Cheney 2024 campaign.
Some of the committee’s findings were left out due to the “subpar” performance of some staff members, according to Jeremy Adler, the communications director and deputy chief of staff for Cheney. Additionally, he vehemently admitted that Cheney is emphasizing Trump in the final report to ensure that an incident like Jan. 6 “never happens again.”
According to Adler, Donald Trump is the first president in American history to try to void an election and thwart a peaceful handover of power. So, yes, Liz is “prioritizing” discovering what he did and how he did it as well as making sure it never occurs again.
“Some staff members provided poor report material that reflects long-standing liberal prejudices against Republicans, federal law enforcement, and sociological issues outside the purview of the Select Committee’s work. She will not support any ‘narrative’ that implies Republicans are inherently racist, disparages law enforcement personnel, or assumes that all Americans who believe God has blessed America are white supremacists, according to Adler.
The panel’s original mandate, according to staff, was to determine what political factors, intelligence gaps, and security lapses caused law enforcement to be unprepared and overrun by the rioters and take steps to prevent a repeat of those circumstances. They contend that the final report will lack crucial lessons for the future if information pertinent to this mission statement is left out.
According to reports, two weeks ago, staff members were informed that no work unrelated to Trump would be included in the final report.
The decision was revealed during a virtual meeting, and a staff member claimed to the Washington Post that “everybody freaked out.”
The report’s lengthy or academic chapters apparently turned off committee members.
A senior Democratic official said, “It’s not a class project – everyone doesn’t receive a participation trophy,” and that one issue is that many of the results are “about distasteful but fully legal stuff.”