A month before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, the aspiring dictator is laying the groundwork to prosecute his political enemies upon his return.
On Tuesday, Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, in his capacity as chairman of the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, released a 128-page “interim report” absolving Trump of any responsibility for the January 6 coup, while recommending criminal prosecution of former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney for alleged “witness tampering.”
The report stated that “Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
It also called for the FBI to investigate Cheney, a Republican, for “procuring another person to commit perjury.”
For over two years, Loudermilk, an ardent supporter of Trump’s failed coup, has been “investigating” the attack on the Capitol and the “politicization of the January 6th Select Committee.” Cheney served as the vice chair of the committee, which was chaired by Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson.
Loudermilk was one of 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election after the attack on Congress. Additionally, the Select Committee uncovered video evidence that the day before the assault on the Capitol—January 5, 2021—Loudermilk was giving guided tours of the Capitol complex to Trump supporters. At the time Loudermilk was giving the “tours,” the Capitol complex was closed to the public—including the families of Congress members—due to the coronavirus.
In the report overseen by Loudermilk, blame for the violence on January 6 is reserved solely for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and certain elements in the National Guard and Pentagon for not adhering to orders allegedly issued by Trump on January 3, 2021 to “keep the demonstrations safe.” The role of Trump and the Republican Party, and Trump’s supporters on the Supreme Court, in the Pentagon and on Wall Street, is virtually ignored.
The report does contain some information, previously reported by the WSWS, on the role of certain figures in the Pentagon, including then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and then-Secreatary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, in delaying requests from the D.C. National Guard to deploy troops to the besieged Capitol. This was covered up in the hearings and final report of the House January 6 Committee.
As the World Socialist Web Site has been reporting for years, the attempted coup was not the work of Trump alone, but a pre-planned, multipronged operation that had the support of large sections of the police-military-intelligence apparatus, along with a majority of the Republican Party and far-right justices on the Supreme Court.
The failure of the Democratic Party to thoroughly investigate and prosecute Trump and his allies throughout the government for the attack has provided Trump an opening to not only escape any accountability, but to exploit his opponents’ coverup to perhaps imprison them.
Loudermilk, acting as Trump’s attack dog, focused nearly the first half of the report on Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson, concluding with the demand for the former’s criminal prosecution. The report alleges that Cheney “backchannelled” with current CNN commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin to “coordinate” Hutchinson’s testimony before the Select Committee while she was still being represented by an attorney paid for by the Trump campaign.
According to Loudermilk, the fact that Hutchinson’s testimony changed after she ditched her Trump-supplied lawyer and engaged a new lawyer is proof of collusion with Cheney, rather than evidence of Trump’s mafioso tactics, learned in the New York real estate market and under the tutorship of fascistic lawyer Roy Cohn.
Hutchinson was a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows in the lead-up to and aftermath of the attack on Congress. Her explosive televised testimony before the committee, under oath, included allegations that on January 2, 2021 she was told by Trump’s top coup lawyer Rudy Giuliani that Trump was “going to the Capitol” on January 6, and that “He’s going to look powerful.” She testified that she heard Giuliani and others speak openly about militia elements that would be present on January 6.
In perhaps her most memorable testimony, Hutchinson recalled that Trump was “enraged” on January 6 after he found out that the Secret Service installed magnetometers to prevent armed Trump supporters from attending his speech at the Ellipse. During the speech, Trump ordered his followers to march on the Capitol “or else you are not going to have a country any more.” Hutchinson also testified that after the Secret Service refused to transport Trump to the besieged Capitol following his speech, he lashed out at his agents and tried to grab one by the throat.
Following the release of Loudermilk’s report, Trump posted on social media, shortly after 3:00 a.m. local time on December 18: “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’ Thank you Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done.”
In a statement posted on December 17 on social media, Cheney defended the January 6 Select Committee, noting that it “featured scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration.” She wrote that Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”
As Trump threatens to prosecute those who dared to cross him, the Georgia Court of Appeals has essentially buried the election interference case in the state after ordering the removal of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. Thursday’s ruling concerns a case launched in August 2023, when Trump and 18 others were indicted for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia.
Trump and his co-conspirators pleaded not guilty. The case was delayed after it was revealed by Trump’s lawyers that Willis had an undisclosed relationship with a prosecutor she hired and was paying a six-figure salary. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March of this year that this “conflict of interest” could be mitigated if Nathan Wade, Willis’s romantic partner, was removed from the case.
Hours after McAfee’s ruling, Wade quit. However, Judge E. Trenton Brown, one of the three Republican-appointed judges who oversaw Trump’s appeal, ruled that the lower court “erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office.”
As of now, the indictment against the remaining defendants stands, although it is unclear if and when a new prosecutor will be named. In a comment to ABC Thursday, Trump gloated, “We had a great victory. ... That case is all dead now. Another one bites the dust. That woman was a disgrace with her boyfriend.”