The January 6 select committee finally released their final report on Friday morning, as Leah highlighted earlier. With soon-to-be former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) serving as the vice chairwoman, she was allowed produce a foreword, which took up approximately four pages of the nearly 850-page-report.
As brief as the foreword is, Cheney still looks to make her mark. There's reference to Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, as Cheney has done in the past, when she had even compared herself to the first Republican president.
POLITICO's Playbook for Friday morning highlighted many parts of the report, including this excerpt from Cheney's foreword:
The Committee recognizes that this investigation is just a beginning; it is only an initial step in addressing President Trump’s effort to remain in office illegally. Prosecutors are considering the implications of the conduct we describe in this report. As are voters.
It's not merely the criminal referrals that the select committee sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) as it applies to former and potentially future President Donald Trump. Cheney is also looking to remind readers once more how hellbent she is in preventing him from becoming president again. She herself may even run against Trump.
"No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office," Cheney wrote about Trump with regards to his supposed inaction during the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
While Cheney may wish to let voters decide whether or not Trump will become president again, the same cannot be said for Democrats. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) last week introduced legislation that would bar Trump from holding federal office again, citing a section of the 14th Amendment.
Cheney's foreword also seeks to legitimize what has been largely and accurately regarded as a partisan and political committee.
As she wrote:
...We understood from the beginning that explaining all the planning and machinations would be complex and would require many hours of public presentations and testimony. We also understood that our presentations needed to be organized into a series of hearings that presented the key evidence for the American public to watch live or streamed over a reasonable time period, rather than rely on second-hand accounts as reported by media organizations with their own editorial biases. We organized our hearings in segments to meet that goal. Tens of millions of Americans watched.
Later on, Cheney equated the report with the hearings, arguing it "is designed to deliver our findings in detail in a format that is accessible for all Americans." She also went on to suggest that the select committee's hearings and report would have more credibility if the majority of witnesses were Republicans. "In presenting all of the information in our hearings, we decided that the vast majority of our witnesses needed to be Republicans. They were," Cheney wrote.
With the party being split into factions of holier than thou NeverTrumpers, this hasn't exactly turned out to be the case.
Townhall has covered, for instance, the credibility hits that one of the select committee's star witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, has taken.
Further, while Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), both who will not be in office for the 118th Congress in just over a week, may consider themselves Republicans, they were both handpicked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Thanks to Pelosi objecting to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) picks of Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) serving on the select committee, no members chosen by the minority party served.
Towards her closing, Cheney throws her fellow conservatives under the bus once more, writing:
Part of the tragedy of January 6th is the conduct of those who knew that what happened was profoundly wrong, but nevertheless tried to downplay it, minimize it or defend those responsible. That effort continues every day. Today, I am perhaps most disappointed in many of my fellow conservatives who know better, those who stood against the threats of communism and Islamic terrorism but concluded that it was easier to appease Donald Trump, or keep their heads down. I had hoped for more from them.
While Americans recognize the harm and the damage that was done on January 6 of last year, they're also tired of being hit over the head by the Democratic and RINO members of the select committee.
As highlighted earlier in the week, liberal constitutional attorney Alan Dershowitz called out the partisan nature of the select committee, also warning that their criminal referrals were unconstitutional.