House Administration Committee Chairman Barry Loudermilk and his team’s hard work has proven that the January 6 Committee operated completely outside the bounds of legitimacy.
The committee broke House rules, violated legal ethics, trampled the constitutional rights of witnesses, and established a systematic pattern of lying and misleading the Congress and the nation.
The evidence Chairman Loudermilk has been developing further makes clear that Congresswoman Liz Cheney was a driving force in polluting the committee.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi picked all the members of the committee. It never met the House standards for genuine bipartisanship. The speed and recklessness with which it was established a populated further indicated that it was poisoned from the beginning.
On June 28, 2021, Speaker Pelosi introduced the resolution to establish the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Two days later – in a largely partisan vote – the House passed it with a 222-190 vote. All the Democrats and only two Republicans, Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, voted to establish the committee. The other 190 Republicans present voted against it.
The next day, Speaker Pelosi appointed eight members: Reps. Bennie Thompson, Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin, Elaine Luria, and Cheney. The following month, she appointed Kinzinger, who was openly anti-Trump and had voted to impeach him. He was a perfect fit for the Pelosi-Cheney goal of having a one-sided investigation.
Then-Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy had previously named five potential Republicans for the committee: Reps. Jim Banks, Jim Jordan, Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong, and Troy Nehls. Neither Cheney nor Kinzinger were on McCarthy’s list. Of course, Pelosi had rejected Banks and Jordan, so McCarthy pulled all Republicans from the committee. So, Cheney and Kinzinger at this point were effectively functioning as Democrats.
By Sept. 2, 2021, Chairman Thompson had named Cheney as vice chair of the committee.
From Pelosi’s standpoint, Cheney was the perfect pick. Cheney’s own rabid hatred of Trump had driven her from once being a rising star in the Republican party to being a pariah who worked with Democrats.
The Wyoming Republican Party had censured Cheney over her anti-Trump mania. She had infuriated enough House Republicans to be ousted as Chair of the House Republican Conference, the third highest minority party job. So, she went from that high-ranking post to becoming the vice chair of the select committee designed to help Democrats and attack Republicans.
On the committee, Cheney’s hatred for Trump further drove her to a series of actions which violated House rules and ignored legal ethics. She destroyed evidence to keep it from the House and manipulated information to prove her points – even when they were profoundly false. Throughout the process, she also knowingly violated the canon of ethics by manipulating witnesses without their attorney’s knowledge.
Cheney’s contempt for Republicans was clear when said to the committee in June 2022, “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
I remember watching at the time and thinking what a deep level of anger and arrogance it must take to publicly condemn people who had once made you their third-ranking leader.
Then, it occurred to me: Pelosi was tactically attacking Trump as a current opponent – and strategically destroying a potential future rival in Cheney at the same time.
This only clarified my belief that the Jan. 6 Committee was a calculated, partisan fraud solely focused on imposing a false narrative on the country to help elect Democrats.
As Chairman Loudermilk is proving in his investigation, the current Congress owes it to history and justice to repudiate the Jan. 6 Committee and declare its findings, subpoenas, and other actions null and void.
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