Cheney: ‘Any interaction’ Trump has with Jan. 6 committee will be under oath, subject to perjury penalties

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) emphasized on Saturday that “any interaction” former President Trump has with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol will be “under oath and subject to penalties of perjury.”

Cheney, who serves as the vice chair of the committee, has remained tight-lipped about many aspects of the panel’s investigation into the Jan. 6 riot, as have her fellow committee members.

In a Saturday interview with Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Cheney declined to specifically say whether the panel would like to hear from the former president, instead noting that if it does he will be required to tell the truth.

Cheney, a prominent Trump critic, did not otherwise hold back in speaking against the former president, however, calling him “fundamentally destructive” for the Republican Party. The congresswoman pointed to responses from her fellow members of the GOP to presidential records being recovered from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home as the latest example.

“You look at how many senior Republicans are going through contortions to try to defend the fact that the former president had stored in a desk drawer apparently, in an unsecure storage room, in a resort … documents that had the highest classification markings,” Cheney told Smith at the Tribune’s annual festival.

Despite her views on the former president, Cheney told Smith she does not regret voting against Trump’s first impeachment based on the evidence. She also noted that those proceedings have informed her current work on the Jan. 6 Committee.

“They would have had more Republican votes if they had enforced their subpoenas, and that is certainly a lesson that we have taken into [the] Jan. 6 Select Committee’s work,” Cheney said.

The Jan. 6 Committee has taken a strong stance on enforcing its subpoenas, referring several Trump allies for criminal contempt of Congress.

Cheney said she would “do everything I can” to ensure Trump is not the Republican nominee for president in 2024.

“And if he is the nominee,” she added, “I won’t be a Republican.”

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