Liz Cheney hits back at Trump after saying January 6 committee members should be jailed – live updates

Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
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Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
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Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.
Key events
Police in Pennsylvania are reportedly questioning a man in connection with the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, in New York City last week.
News of Thompson’s murder was greeted with sympathy and cheers on some corners of social media, particularly from people who are critical of the insurer’s treatment of its customers. Over the weekend, the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reacted to that sentiment by saying it is a sign that the US healthcare system needs real reform. Here’s more:
Progressive congressperson Ro Khanna has sympathy for the murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson – yet at the same time is not surprised that the killing reignited a national dialogue about inequities in the US healthcare system, he said in an interview on Sunday.
‘It was horrific,’ the California Democrat said on ABC This Week with respect to the slaying of Thompson, whose survivors include his widow and two sons ages 16 and 19. ‘I mean, this is a father we’re talking about – of two children, and … there is no justification for violence.
‘But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.’
Khanna told the show’s host, Martha Raddatz, that he agreed with fellow liberal and US senator Bernie Sanders when he wrote recently on social media: ‘We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for all.
‘After years, Sanders is winning this debate,’ Khanna said, referring to the Vermont senator’s support for a single-payer national health insurance system seen in other wealthy democracies.
Rightwing figures on social media are celebrating news that Daniel Penny has been acquitted of charges related to the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway train.
A jury acquitted the Marine Corps veteran Penny on a charge of criminally negligent homicide, after last week deadlocking on a manslaughter charge that the judge then ordered dismissed.
In reaction to the news, the Republican congressman Eli Crane wrote on X:
Massive vibe shift and a huge win for our nation.
The commentator Matt Walsh said:
Daniel Penny now has his freedom. He should also have the Medal of Freedom for the courage he displayed on the train that day, and during the ordeal that followed. Maybe with Trump coming in, that might actually happen.
The Trump ally Charlie Kirk wrote:
Marine hero Daniel Penny has been found NOT GUILTY. He has been acquitted!! Thank God!!
Here’s more about the verdict:
Just after midnight, Donald Trump made this somewhat strange post on Truth Social:
The Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections. They want all future Presidential Elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College!
He did not say which Democrats he was referring to, and the comment seems at odds with the public views of some in the party, at least before the 2024 election.
If there’s any aspect of US elections that Democrats want to change, it would be the electoral college, not the popular vote. Some in the party complain that the system favors the GOP, particularly since since George W Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 both won the presidency in those years despite not winning the popular vote. Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz even mentioned getting rid of the electoral college during the campaign.
Trump, of course, won both the electoral college and popular vote on 5 November – a decisive victory that abolishing the electoral college would not have prevented.
Joan E Greve
Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington state Democrats, has formally launched a bid to become one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee, which will hold leadership elections in February.
In a statement announcing her candidacy, Conrad touted the $9m the state party has raised since she became chair last year and noted that Washington state bucked the national trend of shifting toward Republicans in the presidential election last month.
“I am asking for the votes of every Democratic National Committee member to be your next Vice Chair to bring the tools that helped Washington State Democrats succeed to a national platform,” Conrad said.
“I believe in the power of partnership. Our policies are popular. Our values are American values. Together, let’s lead our party out of the wilderness and start improving the lives of all Americans again.”
The DNC has four vice-chair posts to fill, and at least one other candidate, the pro-Palestinian advocate and longtime DNC member James Zogby, has already launched a bid. David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland shooting turned gun safety activist, is also considering a run.
In an interview with CNN, the Democratic congressman James Clyburn said Donald Trump’s comments about jailing the January 6 committee members should be taken seriously.
“Those are his words. We ought to believe him when he says it. And I know there are people already saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t mean that.’ OK, go and look and see … what he did after the 2016 election. We got a precursor way back then to what’s now being called Project 2025,” Clyburn said.
The South Carolina lawmaker also warned that the last time a president like Trump took office, states imposed Jim Crow laws:
I’ve studied history all of my life, and I’m telling you, what I see going on, what I hear coming from those people who are planning to work in this administration should be concerned for everybody. I know what happened. The history is very clear what happened the last time we had a presidential election that portended this, Jim Crow became the law of the land. And that’s where we’re headed if we aren’t careful.
Supreme court rejects Trump’s attempt to lift gag order in hush-money case
The supreme court has turned down a request by Donald Trump’s attorneys to order the lifting of the gag order imposed on the president-elect in his hush-money case.
In a brief order, the court denied a petition from Trump’s attorneys that was addressed to Samuel Alito, a member of its conservative supermajority.
Juan Merchan, the New York judge who presided over the trial that saw Trump convicted of 34 felony business fraud charges, imposed the gag order in March, which currently prevents the incoming president from making public statements about prosecutors, court staff and their families. Here’s more:
In his weekend interview with NBC News where he said members of the January 6 committee should be jailed, Donald Trump also made clear that he planned to stick with his promise to pardon those charged over the attack on the Capitol. Here’s more, from the Guardian’s Michael Sainato:
In his first sit-down television news interview since winning a second presidency in November’s election, Donald Trump renewed promises to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the US Capitol in early 2021.
He also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs in the conversation with NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker – the latter of which he acknowledged could cause Americans to pay more after riding voters’ complaints about higher prices back to the White House at the expense of Vice-President Kamala Harris.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very nasty system”.
“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May by New York state prosecutors of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “The system’s a very corrupt system.”
Trump said there may be some exceptions to his pardons over an attack on the Capitol that was meant to keep him in the Oval Office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – and which was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. He referenced previously debunked claims of anti-Trump law enforcement infiltrating his supporters’ ranks and agitating the attack.
Yesterday on CNN, the Republican senator Markwayne Mullin was asked for his thoughts on Donald Trump’s comments about prosecuting members of the January 6 committee.
He said the now-shuttered House investigation was worthy of investigation, and repeated Trump’s factually dubious assertions that they destroyed evidence, but stopped short of calling for the members’ jailing. “I don’t think they have a reason to be afraid now,” Mullin said. He continued:
I think that investigation should be in looked into if there was criminal activity that took place with the January 6 committee. There was a lot of questions that didn’t get answered. There was a lot of information that was destroyed. Why did they destroy it? Why didn’t they? Why did they refuse to allow a lot of people to testify, or their testimony to actually become public? If the American people want to know that, then maybe we do another hearing.
Adam Schiff, the California senator-elect who served on the January 6 committee during his just-concluded time in the House, responded to Donald Trump’s call for his jailing.
Writing on X, Schiff said:
When Trump violated his oath, I stood up to him. When he tried to overturn the 2020 election, the January 6th Committee stood in defense of our democracy. Threats to jail us will not deter us. Nothing will stop me from doing my duty to the American people.
Liz Cheney says Trump ‘lied about the January 6th select committee’
In his interview with NBC News, Donald Trump said the January 6 committee “deleted and destroyed all evidence”, before insisting he was not responsible for the violent attack on the Capitol.
“And Cheney was behind it. And so was [Democratic chair] Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee. For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said.
The committee’s report and its evidence remains publicly available, and Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman who served as the body’s vice-chair, said in a statement that Trump was not telling the truth about its work:
This morning, President-elect Trump again lied about the January 6th Select Committee, and said members of the Committee ‘should go to jail’ for carrying out our constitutional responsibilities. Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.
Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson in this July 2023 letter. There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct.
Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
-
Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
-
Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
-
Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.