Liz Cheney appointed vice chair of select committee investigating Jan. 6 Capitol attack
The story says this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has been appointed as vice chair of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, according to a statementThursday from the panel.
“Every member of this committee is dedicated to conducting a non-partisan, professional, and thorough investigation of all the relevant facts regarding January 6th and the threat to our Constitution we faced that day,” Cheney said in a statement. “I have accepted the position of Vice Chair of the committee to assure that we achieve that goal.”
Again, Rep. Cheney is all about “conducting a non-partisan, professional, and thorough investigation of all the relevant facts regarding January 6th and the threat to our Constitution we faced that day…”
Got it.
So. Here is a fairly obvious point that has been raised by Rep. Elise Stefanik. Said the New York Congresswoman — who, by the by way, replaced Cheney as the Chair of the House Republican Conference:
In December of 2020, Nancy Pelosi was made aware of potential security threats to the Capitol, and she failed to act.
Well, that certainly seems worth an investigation by Cheney. Let’s recall that the Committee of which Cheney is now Vice Chair is doing this, as per CNN:
The House Select Committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot has requested that a group of telecommunications companies preserve the phone records of a group of GOP members of Congress and former President Donald Trump, as well as members of the Trump family, who played some role in the “Stop the Steal” rally that served as the prelude to the Capitol insurrection.
The records request is the first step in the committee’s investigatory process and could signal the direction they plan to go when they call witnesses.…
The request for the preservation of phone records of certain lawmakers and members of the former President’s orbit were part of a larger preservation request to 35 social media and telecommunication companies including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Sprint. The committee also made separate preservation requests to search engine and social media companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Signal, Slack, YouTube, Twitch and Twitter.
So the obvious question. When will Vice Chair Liz Cheney request “35 social media and telecommunication companies including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular and Sprint” to “preserve the phone records” of Speaker Pelosi, her staff, the Democratic Leadership and all Democrats in charge of protecting the security of the Capitol on January 6th?
When will Cheney make “separate preservation requests to search engine and social media companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Signal, Slack, YouTube, Twitch and Twitter” for the communications of Pelosi, her staff, and all Democrats in the House responsible for the security of the Capitol?
Note well: she has never announced her willingness to do so.
Which is to say, unless and until she does demand an investigation into Pelosi’s conduct and that of all Democrats who had a role in seeing to the security of the Capitol, this “investigation” is the partisan sham Republicans have said it is.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has summed up the problem of Pelosi’s role precisely, saying: ”We had many failures within the leadership.”
Exactly.
And, of course, the Pelosi/Democrat allies in the media have rallied to Cheney.
Here, for example, is Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent headlining this:
The new GOP rage-fest at Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger contains a big tell
With zero sense of irony, Sargent opens by saying this:
In today’s GOP, open proponents of political violence and the overturning of elections through mob insurrection are met with little to no punishment. They regularly earncelebrity treatment on the GOP’s primary propaganda channel.
By contrast, those who support a full accounting into the worst outbreak of insurrectionist political violence in recent U.S. history face censure, demotion and even threats of expulsion.
Got that? The real Republicans in the House demanded exactly that the Committee look into the repeated violent insurrections that occurred in one American city after another in the summer of 2020. The answer from Pelosi and company: No. There will be no “full accounting” of the riots that took lives, looted and torched American businesses owned by minorities and others, not to mention burned a police precinct to the ground. No, no. We can’t look there, according to Pelosi and her Committee.
There is more irony coming from Sargent. He writes:
Yet the new campaign against Cheney and (fellow Republican Committee Member and Never Trumper, the Illinois Congressman Adam) Kinzinger contains a key tell. It’s this: The contrast between the accommodation of advocates of political violence and insurrection on one side — and the censure of those who want a full repudiation of both on the other — is largely a project of GOP elites.”
Say what? It is exactly the “GOP elites” who demanded the Committee investigate the insurrectionist violence of 2020 in all those cities. It was Democrats who refused. Democrats decidedly want no investigation of those insurrectionist riots, nor a “full repudiation.”
The question is: What will Liz Cheney do about that?
The answer thus far is: Nothing.
Why? Because the fix is in.
Shocking.
Not.
