Vice Speaker Liz Cheney speaks as the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol holds a hearing in Washington on June 28. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
The congressional panel investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump may make multiple referrals to the Justice Department seeking criminal charges against the former president, its vice chair Liz Cheney said.
Cheney, in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” also said the department should not wait for a House select committee to make a formal recommendation for charges to take action against Trump.
Asked if the committee hearings indicated that Trump should be prosecuted, Cheney said: “Ultimately, the Department of Justice will decide that.”
Cheney, one of two Republicans on the Democratic-led panel, said “we will decide as a committee” whether to make a formal criminal referral to the Justice Department recommending charges against Trump.
“The Ministry of Justice should not wait for the commission to refer the criminal case. There can be more than one criminal referral,” Cheney said.
No criminal charges have ever been brought against a sitting or former President of the United States. Asked what it would mean for the country if President Joe Biden’s Justice Department indicted his predecessor, Cheney said: “I’m more concerned about what it would mean if people weren’t held accountable for what happened here.”
Cheney criticized Trump’s conduct before, during and after the January 6, 2001 attack on the Capitol by his supporters in their failed attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory, including an inflammatory speech immediately before the riot.
“I think it’s a much more serious constitutional threat if a president can engage in these kinds of activities and, you know, the majority of the president’s party looks the other way — or we as a country decide, you know, we’re not really going to accept seriously our constitutional obligations,” Cheney said.
“And if you just think about it in terms of what kind of person knows that a mob is armed and sends a mob to attack the Capitol and further incites that mob when his own vice president is under threat, when Congress is under threat,” Cheney added.
Cheney, whose father Dick Cheney served as vice president from 2001 to 2009, also said she has not yet decided whether to run for president in 2024, despite facing a Republican primary challenge for the nomination is up for re-election this year for the House seat representing Wyoming.
Trump has not yet announced whether he will run for president again in 2024.
“A man as dangerous as Donald Trump can absolutely never be anywhere near the Oval Office again,” Cheney said.
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Trump denied responsibility for the Capitol attack, but said he would pardon those involved if he were re-elected.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to then-Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave bombshell testimony to the committee last week about Trump’s conduct on the day of the riot.
Hutchinson testified that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential limousine when his security refused to take him to the Capitol to join supporters. She also said Trump dismissed concerns that some supporters gathered for his speech before the riot were carrying AR-15-style rifles, instead asking security to stop screening attendees with metal-detecting magnetometers so the crowd would look bigger.
Additional witnesses have come forward since Hutchinson’s testimony, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican on the committee, said Sunday.
“There will be a lot more information,” Kinzinger told CNN State of the Union program. “Stay on the line.”
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