Donald Trump threatened criminal prosecution against Liz Cheney for alleged wrongdoing in the congressional investigation into his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and CNN analysts tried to parse his rationale.
The president-elect cited findings by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who issued a report Monday alleging that Cheney may have broken "numerous federal laws," including witness tampering, and journalist Michael Warren believes the former congresswoman has little to fear, even if Trump installs MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as his FBI director.
"If you talk to people around Liz Cheney, they, for the last few weeks, they've been speaking very confidently about essentially bring it on, Donald Trump," said Warren, senior editor at The Dispatch. "If you're really going to do this, we believe we have the law on our side. We believe we have the facts on our side, and she would have the money on her side, too. I mean, the problem with these sort of prosecutions is they get very expensive for the people who are being targeted by them. I think Liz Cheney would have quite a bit of a legal defense fund. I think the thing to be concerned about is some of these people who are not brand names who Donald Trump might go after for, you know, anybody who's listed in Kash Patel's book as 'government gangsters,' as being a 'government gangster,' those people will be, I think, in the crosshairs, and that's something that they should be worried about."
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CNN national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny argued that the president-elect needed to re-establish Cheney, who lost a Republican primary to a Trump-backed candidate, as a political enemy as he returns to the White House.
"Donald Trump is going to be in need of a foil with Republicans in control of the House and Senate," Zeleny said. "Who is he going to fight with? So having Liz Cheney to still sort of fight with is something that he can still sort of bring up and make this kind of irrelevant. But that is one of his challenges going forward. Republicans are in control of government, so it's kind of a strange period for trying to find a sparring partner."
Patel has listed a variety of current and former government officials he would target for prosecution or lawsuits, including former White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson and Alyssa Farah Griffin, and former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney identified a theme.
"Going after Cheney is a way to go after young women," Finney said, "and I think we have to be very clear about how pathetic that would be."
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