During an appearance on Fox News over the weekend, ex-House Speaker Next Gingrich insisted that he believes that January 6 investigators could “face a real risk of jail” for supposedly trampling over the law in their pursuit of the truth surrounding the Capitol riot. In other words, yet another prominent ally of former President Trump is once again resorting to the kind of authoritarian rhetoric that helped incite the Capitol riot in the first place, since it’s actually Trump who’s been legitimately documented to have rejected the rule of law relating to what was, in truth, the duly documented electoral process rather than some kind of sham, as he claimed. In response, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) shredded Gingrich’s remarks.
EXCLU: We obtained the draft Trump executive order that would have seized the voting machines and named a special counsel to probe the 2020 election.
Read the whole thing here: https://t.co/UPyNL5w736
— Betsy Woodruff Swan (@woodruffbets) January 21, 2022
As Cheney — the vice chair of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot — (correctly) put it:
‘A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution. This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.’
A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution.
This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels. https://t.co/vpQZjTg9em
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 23, 2022
It’s worth noting that Gingrich also described investigators handling January 6-related matters as “basically a lynch mob,” which is obviously utterly ridiculous. In the real world, the riot investigation committee recently scored a significant success, obtaining hundreds of pages of records from the Trump administration that the former president claimed to be covered by executive privilege. Among those records was a draft of an executive order that outlined a plan for the seizure of voting machines and other election-related materials by the Defense Department, which was to be followed by a continued investigation into the imaginary fraud that Trump claimed to have plagued the election. To have the Defense Department essentially take over the continuance of the electoral process sounds like something directly out of an overseas dictatorship. But it’s not: it was a proposal that was apparently in circulation around Trump, although the original author doesn’t appear to have been confirmed.
It's wild to reread this December 19, 2020, report, in light of what we just learned about the unsigned executive order that would've in effect amounted to a declaration of martial law https://t.co/UjfVNpaa1f
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 23, 2022
Cheney remains one of the few Republicans in Congress who have expressed opposition to the lies about the electoral process that have been spread by Trump and his allies. Despite her documented conservative beliefs, she is facing a Trump-backed primary challenge in the upcoming race for her seat in Congress.
Thank you @Liz_Cheney for bringing attention to this. This is un American. Those pursuing truth, upholding the law, and defending Democracy must be defended. Gingrich just made clear why we must vote Democrat in 2022. https://t.co/VK3U7OFyu8
— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) January 23, 2022
