US Capitol attack: Liz Cheney says Mike Pence ‘was a hero’ on 6 January

The special House committee investigating the 6 January 2021 insurrection by extremist supporters of then-president Donald Trump are hoping to secure the cooperation of the former vice-president, Mike Pence, who certified Joe Biden’s election victory despite pressure from the White House and the violent mob that broke into the US Capitol.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, deputy chair of the bipartisan panel, called Pence a hero for standing up to Donald Trump’s efforts to “overthrow the will of the people” that day and said that the committee is “looking forward” to working with him.

Related: ‘I was there’: Democrat recalls horror and fury on day of Capitol attack

“We look forward to continuing the cooperation we’ve had from members of the former vice-president’s team and look forward to his cooperation,” Cheney said in an interview with the NBC Today show on Thursday morning.

She said: “Former vice-president Pence was a hero on 6 January. He refused the pressures of the former president, he did his duty and the nation should be very grateful for the actions he took that day.”

The panel is chaired by the Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who told CNN: “We came perilously close to losing our democracy” when thousands of supporters of Trump, egged on by the then-president in the dying days of his one-term presidency, charged the US Capitol on 6 January last year trying to stop members of Congress, who had to flee, from officially certifying Biden’s election victory in November 2020.

The election result was certified hours later after the Capitol had been cleared, with the official act being presided over by Pence, in the vice-president’s role as president of the Senate.

Cheney, the Republican congresswoman representing Wyoming, and the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, who served in the George W Bush administration, spoke of Trump putting Pence under pressure to refuse to certify Biden’s victory and of the then-president’s failure to demand that the mob leave the Capitol even as he watched the violent insurrection on live television at the White House.

Asked if the panel was considering recommending criminal charges against Trump, Cheney said: “Certainly we will be looking at that, there are important questions in front of the committee such as whether the action or inaction of former president Trump attempted to obstruct an official proceeding of Congress, attempted to delay the count of electoral votes.”

She added: “We also know that it was a supreme dereliction of duty, the president of the US refuses to take action to stop a violent assault on the Congress, to stop a violent assault on any of the co-equal branches of government, that’s clearly a dereliction of duty.”

Trump has asked the US supreme court to block the release by the National Archives to the committee of relevant materials relating to his conduct on 6 January last year and in the run-up to that event, the most serious assault on the US Capitol since the war of 1812. Trump claims he is protected by executive privilege because he was president at the time, a claim rejected by the Biden White House and lower courts.

Cheney said: “We will not let the former president hide behind these phony claims of privilege and we will get to the bottom of … everything that was going on that day.”

Asked if the US came close to the results of the valid presidential election being overthrown, Cheney said the country “came very close”.

“Our institutions held but they only held because of people who were willing to stand up against the pressure from former president Trump, people in his own Department of Justice … elected officials at the state level who stood up to him and the law enforcement officers here at the Capitol. We need to recognize how important it is … that it never happens again.”

She warned that the “threat continues”.

“Too many in my own party are embracing that former president, are looking the other way, are minimizing the danger … That’s how democracies die. We simply cannot let that happen,” she said.

Meanwhile, in an interview for the New York Times podcast, Cheney confirmed an anecdote from January 6 last year, when she encountered congressman Jim Jordan, a fellow Republican but a far-right loyalist of Trump who had been pushing the lie that Biden did not win the election, on the House floor.

Jordan had been standing in the aisle as lawmakers were being escorted away from the encroaching mob, and he said to Cheney, while reaching out to her, the Times relayed: “We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.”

To which she sharply replied, having pushed his proffered hand away, the Times reported and Cheney affirmed: “Get away from me. You fucking did this.”