With Donald Trump, every accusation is a confession.
Trump insists that President Joe Biden is “weaponizing” the U.S. government against him because he’s facing trials for a list of alleged crimes — some of which involve actions he’s admitted to publicly or carried out in plain sight.
However, Trump himself is demanding that the government punish a whole (former) Congressional Committee with prison time for investigating just one set of those alleged crimes.
Would it be weaponized government if former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and her fellow January 6th Committee members were thrown in jail for carrying out their duty to the American people?
Now that House Republicans are investigating the investigators, and have released their own conclusions, that’s what Trump is calling for.
The latest investigation focuses on what it deems contradictions or invalidations, such as when Trump’s Secret Service driver denied that Trump lunged for the steering wheel (in an interview the Committee preserved for posterity), while a top White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, says that she heard someone tell a story in which he did.
They’re accusing the Committee of covering up the evidence — the evidence they found in the records the Committee had preserved and archived.
Trump is particularly angry about the tantrum story. He’s denied all along that he had explosive fits over his security detail refusing to take him to the Capitol to join his fans — who by that time were already becoming rowdy and violent.
While there may be debates about the specific detail of whether he lunged, there’s consistent evidence across interviews that Trump demanded to go and had fits about being denied that as a possibility.
Now, he’s saying that Cheney and other Members should all be imprisoned for revealing his bad behavior, or, in Trump’s words, for “destroying evidence” (that was not actually destroyed).
He posted on his social media, linking to a right-wing news article claiming that Cheney suppressed evidence. Trump declared, in all caps:
‘SHE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED FOR WHAT SHE HAS DONE TO OUR COUNTRY! SHE ILLEGALLY DESTROYED THE EVIDENCE. UNREAL!!!”
Ironically, Trump’s link — which happens to be an opinion piece by Kash Patel, rather than any factual expose — does not say that Cheney destroyed evidence.
Instead, Patel claims that she “suppressed” evidence by not making a public display of Tony Ornato’s denial that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of The Beast. According to Patel’s opinion in The Federalist:
“Cheney and her Never Trump comrades have been exposed for excluding the testimony of career Secret Service Agent Tony Ornato from the evidentiary record.”
In reality, though, there are interviews with Ornato on the public record — such as the one in which he denies remembering or being aware of phone calls and intelligence shared that morning, but recalls discussing with Hutchinson Trump’s desire to go to the Capitol, and denies that the motorcade was delayed over his insistence.
To sum that up: Kash Patel’s claim that the January 6th Committee hid Ornato’s denial is false. Trump’s insinuation that the article he linked suggests Cheney deleted evidence is false.
And Trump — from all that disinformation — concludes Cheney should be prosecuted.
Still, Trump wasn’t done.
He shared a link from a different right-wing site making similar claims. It focused on the fact that Ornato’s denial wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the final report.
However, it doesn’t mention that the specific story of trying to grab the steering wheel also isn’t alleged as fact in that report. Instead, the report — which can be seen online by anyone interested in truth — says the following:
“The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the Select Committee about this topic, including multiple members of the Secret Service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security and military officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior [upon being denied a trip to the Capitol] as ‘irate,’ ‘furious,’ ‘insistent,’ ‘profane’ and ‘heated.’”
Still, Trump shared the story and added his own commentary. He declared:
“She should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”
The interview with Ornato is publicly available. The Republican group that reviewed the evidence found Ornato’s denials in the interviews that the January 6th Committee saved and kept with other evidence. The evidence is not deleted or “suppressed.”
But Trump still wants Cheney — along with the rest of the panel — to go to jail for it.
So, if it’s not about evidence suppression or deletion, is it really all about standing up to him? And if so, is that not real weaponization of the justice system?
Like we said earlier, every accusation is a confession.
Below, Trump calls for Cheney to be prosecuted.
