LIZ MAY URGE FEDS ON DON
Says aide’s talk shows prez knew crowd was armed, sent them to Capitol anyway
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol may make a criminal referral against former President Donald Trump, its Republican vice chairwoman said Sunday.
The possible legal move was prompted by the bombshell testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who told the select committee that Trump knew members of the crowd were armed when he urged them to march to the Capitol, Rep. Liz Cheney said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Asked whether Trump should be prosecuted, the Wyoming Republican said, “Ultimately, the Justice Department will decide that.”
But she added, “I think we may well as a committee have a view on that.
“If you just think about it from the perspective of what kind of man knows that a mob is armed and sends the mob to attack the Capitol and further incites that mob when his own vice president is under threat, when the Congress is under threat,” she said. “It’s very chilling.
“I think certainly we will, you know, continue to present to the American people what we found.”
Trump was impeached for inciting the siege, in which crowds of his supporters stormed the halls of Congress as lawmakers met to finalize the 2020 presidential election results.
But the special committee has been probing the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the vote, emphasizing that he knew his claims of a stolen election were false.
“I have greater concern about what it would mean if people weren’t held accountable for what’s happened here,” Cheney said when asked if she was worried about prosecuting an ex-president.
Another member of the panel, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said she wants to know what federal prosecutors are doing with the committee’s findings.
Justice Department attorneys reportedly said they felt blindsided by Hutchinson’s testimony to the committee last week.
“I was surprised that the prosecutors were surprised. What are they doing over there?” Lofgren said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“They could subpoena Ms. Hutchinson. I’m surprised they had not done so,” Lofgren said. “They have a much greater opportunity to enforce their subpoenas than our legislative committee does.”
Efforts by Trump and his allies to smear Hutchinson have come as no surprise, she added.
“We always expected Trump world to try and discredit her, and they are not disappointing us in that regard,” she said.
“I thought her testimony was credible. She has nothing to gain by stepping forward and telling the truth. And Trump world has everything to lose by the truth,” she said.
Hutchinson’s dramatic testimony has prompted other potential witnesses to reach out to the committee, a Republican panel member said.
“She’s been inspiring for a lot of people,” Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Every day we get new people that come forward and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t think maybe this piece of a story that I knew was important,’ ” he added.
The committee is gathering information from some of the potential new witnesses, he said.
“There will be way more information, and stay tuned,” he said.
Hutchinson’s appearance came after many of Trump’s former staffers refused to cooperate with the investigation.
“People can forget the names of every one of us on this committee; they will not forget her name,” Kinzinger said.
“By the way, she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to be out in the public spotlight,” he added.
“But she has a commitment to truth that somebody like Kristi Noem, for instance, and most people in our party would actually benefit to take just a 10% ounce of.”
Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, told CNN that she refuses to blame Trump for inciting the deadly siege of the Capitol.