Liz Cheney hits back at GOP critics of Jan 6 committee and previews hearings

House January 6 select committee vice-chair Liz Cheney said the panel’s upcoming hearings will disprove Republican claims that the probe is “tainted and political”.

In an opinion column published on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, the Wyoming Republican representative said the select committee will use public hearings to show lies told by former president Donald Trump and his allies “provoked the violence on January 6th,” the day a mob of the ex-president’s supporters stormed the Capitol in the worst attack on America’s legislature since the 1814 Burning of Washington.

Ms Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, is one of just two GOP House members serving on the select committee. Her participation in the investigation into the causes of the pro-Trump insurrection has made her and the panel’s other Republican — Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger — persona non grata within the House GOP.

The Wyoming congresswoman was once the chair of the House Republican Conference, but was stripped of her position last year over her refusal to stop criticising Mr Trump and her participation on the select committee. Earlier this month, both Ms Cheney and Mr Kinzinger were censured by the Republican National Committee for serving on the panel, which the committee’s censure resolution claimed was investigating innocent Americans for participating in “legitimate political discourse”.

“Republicans,” Ms Cheney wrote, “used to advocate fidelity to the rule of law and the plain text of the Constitution” until 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,” she continued. “Almost all members of Congress know this—although many lack the courage to say it out loud”.

Referring to former vice president Mike Pence’s recent remarks that called Mr Trump’s insistence that he, as vice president, could unilaterally reject electoral votes from swing states won by Mr Biden as “un-American,” Ms Cheney added that what Mr Trump had desired of Mr Pence “was unconstitutional and illegal” as well.

“The [January] 6 investigation 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,” she wrote. “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. 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”.