President-elect Donald Trump has said that he won’t direct the Department of Justice to go after former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, but that doesn’t mean he can’t weigh in on or give a hint to what he thinks could happen to her once he takes office.
Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday that Cheney “could be in a lot of trouble” after a U.S. House subcommittee report released Tuesday called for a criminal investigation into her actions on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol over alleged witness tampering.
“Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI,’” Trump posted.
Trump also thanked U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Georgia, chair of the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, for his report, and conservative news outlet Newsmax for its coverage of the topic.
Cheney has been one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics since he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. She lost her 2022 reelection bid to U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman by a landslide margin.
The interim report released Tuesday calls for the Justice Department to investigate Cheney’s communications with Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then-President Donald Trump who became the Jan. 6 Committee’s star witness.
Hageman told Cowboy State Daily that she didn’t find the report surprising.
“We already knew Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony was fabricated and had been debunked at the time she gave it,” Hageman said. “However, the uniparty and mainstream media were determined to convince the American public to believe her lies and those told by Liz Cheney.”
The interim report found that Cheney and Hutchinson communicated via the encrypted Signal app before Hutchinson’s explosive 2022 testimony to the House Select Committee, and without her attorney knowing.
The report also accuses Cheney of colluding with Hutchinson to provide testimony more favorable to the committee’s desired narrative.
Cheney defended her work on the committee in a statement Tuesday and called the Republicans’ report “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”
“Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim 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 said.
“No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously,” she added.
Criminality?
Trump has been promising and already delivering retribution against his political enemies since the November election. It remains to be seen if his pick of Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to run the Department of Justice, and loyalist Kash Patel to run the FBI, will continue this trend.
Although witness tampering is an unquestionable offense in legal settings, Cheney made her communications to Hutchinson as a member of Congress performing a legislative function, not as an attorney in an ongoing court case.
“Merely talking to her without her lawyer might raise a suspicion that something untoward happened, but does not prove it without more investigation,” said former U.S. Attorney for Wyoming Kip Crofts.
Like the report issued Tuesday, the Jan. 6 committee’s recommendations hold no legal binding, and it will be up to the Department of Justice to decide if it wants to investigate and/or file criminal charges against Cheney.
This is why Crofts said he’s unsure if any charges could be brought against her, as the Federal Rules of Evidence generally prohibit the use of hearsay in Federal Court and do not refer to Congress.
“It may be that all she did was exercise bad judgement, contrary to her training as a lawyer, in allowing the Congress and the public to hear that wild tale and to conclude that Trump was acting in such a deranged fashion,” Crofts said.
Another factor in determining criminality, Crofts said, would be the nature of Cheney and Hutchinson’s private conversations and whether Cheney improperly or unlawfully tried to influence what Hutchinson said before the committee.
“Once again, it may have been an ethical violation of local bar association rules for her to communicate directly with a person who was represented by a lawyer, but that would not violate any criminal statute that I know of,” Crofts said.
Crofts added that if Hutchinson was reluctant to testify but Cheney used a threat or intimidation to get her to do so, that could be considered a potential criminal offense.
What Did She Say?
Although it’s unknown what the two talked about during their phone calls, in Hutchinson’s 2023 book, she said that Cheney played a primary role in Hutchinson firing her attorney and provided her with a list of attorneys who would be more friendly toward her committee.
Hutchinson’s testimony to the committee was significant and has been highly disputed.
In her account, Hutchinson claimed she had been told from a thirdhand source that Trump was so angry when Secret Service agents refused to take his motorcade to the Capitol on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that he “lunged” for the steering wheel to take control of it. The driver of the vehicle denied this account.
She also told the committee Trump was warned that his supporters were carrying weapons Jan. 6, but expressed no concern because they were not a threat to him.
Crofts told Cowboy State Daily that relying on hearsay is never acceptable in a court proceeding and he would not have had Hutchinson testify, whether the House rules prohibit hearsay or not. He said when he heard Hutchinson’s story about Trump trying to take control of the car, he said it sounded “like a bogus story … from the start.”
“Ms. Hutchinson did not say she had witnessed this behavior — she just said she heard it,” he said. “So, there was no way to cross examine her on what exactly happened.”
Crofts said it might be possible to file a complaint with an ethics panel of the Washington, D.C., Bar over the issue. Cheney already had a complaint filed on her with this bar in October based on the earlier finding by Loudermilk’s subcommittee that Cheney talked to Hutchinson without her lawyer knowing.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
