Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (R) took issue with recent comments made by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R) in which he suggested that members of the Jan. 6 committee could be put behind bars should Republicans take control of Congress following the 2022 midterm elections.
Gingrich predicted on Sunday during an appearance on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that Republicans will take back the House and the Senate after the elections, and that the new Congress would potentially jail the committee for its investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
"You're going to have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate. And all of these people who have been so tough and so mean and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every email. Because I think it's clear that these are people who are literally just running over the law, pursuing innocent people," Gingrich said.
The former Speaker went on to say that the committee is "basically a lynch mob" and that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has "joined the lynch mob and is totally misusing the FBI."
"And I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down," Gingrich said. "And the wolves are going to find out they are now sheep and they're the ones who are going to face a real risk of, I think, jail for the kind of laws they're breaking."
But Cheney, the vice-chair on the Jan. 6 committee, clapped back by accusing Gingrich of "threatening" members of Congress.
"A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution," Cheney said in a tweet Sunday. "This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels."
Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R) are the only Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 committee.
The committee has been investigating what led to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack over the last several months, speaking with numerous allies of former President Donald Trump to determine whether his claims of a stolen 2020 election prompted the events that unfolded at the Capitol.
Among those the committee has sought conversations with include then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former White House adviser Steve Bannon, who have both been issued subpoenas, then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who recently spoke virtually with the panel and Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, who was sent a letter last week asking that she voluntarily appear in front of the committee next month to discuss any conversations she had on Jan. 6, 2021 with the former president and any conversations she witnessed between him and then-Vice President Mike Pence.
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