If corporate news media wants to know why Americans don’t trust it anymore, they should look no further than the shameful, outrageous, and patently false coverage of the resolution adopted by the RNC to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Let me be abundantly clear: as Chairman of the RNC, I have repeatedly condemned the violence that occurred at the Capitol on January 6th and do so again today. On January 6, 2021 , the members of the RNC released a statement that read, “These violent scenes we have witnessed do not represent acts of patriotism, but an attack on our country and its founding principles.” I tweeted that the violence was “shameful” and condemned it in the strongest possible terms.
The events of that day are deeply personal to me and our team as the FBI found a bomb outside of RNC headquarters that afternoon, and I will never forget what it felt like to know that my staff was in immediate danger. Violence has no place in our political discourse, period, and those who engaged in violence on January 6th and committed crimes should be held accountable with due process by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and prosecutors.
But the awful events of that day do not justify Cheney or Kinzinger enabling a partisan committee whose real purpose seems to be helping Democrats’ electoral prospects at the cost of potentially ruining innocent people’s lives. From the outset, the committee has lacked the legitimacy of past independent, bipartisan efforts investigating events of national importance. For starters, Republican leadership was not allowed to freely appoint a single Republican to the committee. Instead, Cheney and Kinzinger were hand-picked by Nancy Pelosi.
The January 6 Committee predictably has now vastly exceeded its original purpose and morphed into something else entirely, investigating Republicans who had nothing to do with January 6 for the apparent offense of being Republican. Under the Committee’s approach, almost anything related to the 2020 election is within the scope of its jurisdiction, to include harassing citizens who were not even in Washington, DC that day.
Nancy Pelosi’s committee – which the New York Times says “is employing techniques more common in criminal cases than in congressional inquiries” – has no authority to pursue criminal charges, is not respecting the rights of private citizens and has disregarded due process and checks and balances. Last month, reports showed that 90 percent of the committee’s subpoenas have been delivered to people who weren’t even at the Capitol on January 6th. That is political posturing, not pursuing justice. Even an individual on trial has the right to face a jury of his peers, but those being called in front of the committee are faced with a hostile kangaroo court that reached a conclusion long before even asking a question.
This includes individuals like one of the RNC’s members who was subpoenaed because, weeks before January 6th, she served as an alternate elector pending the outcome of ongoing lawsuits – an action with clear legal precedent which Democrats themselves have done in the past. Now she could face costly legal bills even though she was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6th and had nothing to do with the violence that occurred.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are cheapening the events of January 6th by participating in Nancy Pelosi’s partisan committee. The Senate has already completed one investigation into January 6th, and there are multiple ongoing active law enforcement investigations into what happened that day. These are the correct avenues for investigation.
I firmly believe we are the big tent party, and that disagreement amongst Republicans is welcome and can make us stronger. But what Cheney and Kinzinger are engaged in goes much further than any policy disagreement. These two have permitted their party affiliation to be weaponized to allow the Democrats gross overreach and abuse of power. In short, they never should have agreed to be part of a committee where Republicans were denied representation.
As I have repeatedly stated, violence is not legitimate political discourse – whether in the U.S. Capitol or in Democrat-run cities across the country – and neither is abusing Congress’ investigatory powers for political gain. Media outlets pretending that the RNC believes otherwise are doing so in bad faith, and their lies should be called out for the cheap political stunts they are.
