Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) lauded “confessions” to the January 6th Committee on Thursday night, as what critics have called a “show trial” aired its eighth public hearing in prime time on national television. The hearing produced little new evidence, but many denunciations of former President Donald Trump.
Cheney lauded those former Trump administration aides who had come forward to denounce the 45th president, including former White House staffer Cassidy Hutschinson, though her sensational testimony last month has since been discredited — including by Thursday’s hearing, albeit inadvertently.
She described their testimony as “confessions”:
The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies. It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family. They have come forward. And they have told the American people the truth.
Cheney also boasted that efforts to challenge the committee and its subpoenas were failing, and said the committee could look forward to more such “confessions.”
She said: “Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break.”
Cheney and others suggested that Trump should never hold public office again — though they failed to bar him from office when the Senate declined to convict Trump during the second impeachment trial last year, in the wake of the Capitol riot.
Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, noted:
Declaring that Trump family members and former officials have now “confessed” only played into the criticism of these hearings. By yielding to the temptation to exclude any opposing voices or views, the Committee seems intent on fulfilling the stereotype of the hearings as a show trial.
He added that the hearings would have had more credibility if they had allowed the opposing view any kind of representation, as past investigations have done.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took the unprecedented step of rejecting some of the Republican nominees to serve on the committee, leading House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to withdraw all of the nominees. Pelosi then appointed Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), both of whom are staunch opponents of Trump.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.