(THE FEDERALIST) — Disgraced ex-Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was awarded one of the highest civilian honors last week after House Republicans referred the vice chair of the since-disbanded Select Committee on Jan. 6 to the Justice Department for criminal charges.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden presented Cheney with the Presidential Medal of Freedom along with Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chaired the Democrats’ Soviet-style inquisition on the Capitol riot, for their work running the probe. In December, however, the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., released a nearly 130-page review of the Jan. 6 Committee’s work, concluding Cheney should face a criminal investigation for “witness tampering.”
“Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge,” the report said. Cheney had coordinated to circumvent Hutchinson’s attorney even as the vice chair of the Jan. 6 panel threatened legal action against anyone who attempted to influence witness testimony. The textbook case of projection was just one in a series of episodes wherein House investigators deputized by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi concealed truths surrounding the riot on Jan. 6.
