'Lying about the evidence in all caps': Liz Cheney shoots down Trump’s biggest Jan. 6 lies
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) — who co-chaired the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack — publicly mocked former President Donald Trump while debunking his false claims about the deadly 2021 riot at the US Capitol.
This weekend will mark the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection by a crowd of Trump supporters that resulted in five deaths and hundreds of injuries of US Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers. Ahead of the attack's anniversary, Trump posted to his Truth Social platform that Cheney and House Democrats supposedly deleted records relating to the attack, and also repeated a debunked claim that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) declined an offer of 10,000 National Guard troops to guard the capitol on the day of the riot.
"Why did American Disaster Liz Cheney... ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY most of the evidence, and related items, from the January 6th Committee of Political Thugs and Misfits," Trump wrote on Monday. "THIS ACT OF EXTREME SABOTAGE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY LAWYERS TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR, AND PRESENT, A PROPER DEFENSE OF THEIR CLIENT, ME."
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In a post to her X (formerly Twitter) account, Cheney wrote that the 45th president of the United States appeared to be "starting 2024 hangry." She added that Trump and his lawyers "have had the [January 6 committee] materials (linked below) plus the grand jury info & much more for months."
"Lying about the evidence in all caps won't change the facts," Cheney tweeted. "A public trial will show it all."
As MSNBC columnist Steve Benen noted, while certain details like identities of witnesses were withheld from the committee's archive to protect the safety of individuals who provided testimony, all of the committee's materials and documents are still available in the House archive. None of the committee's materials have been withheld from Trump's legal team — as Cheney said, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith has furnished the ex-president's legal team with all available documents as part of the discovery process, and those materials have been in Trump's possession for months.
Trump's claim about Pelosi rejecting 10,000 National Guard troops has also been proven false. According to the Washington Post, the former president made an "offhand remark" to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller during a meeting discussing the upcoming January 6 rally where Trump suggested the US Capitol would need 10,000 troops as a way of asserting that more than a million of his supporters would converge on Washington that day (the actual number was between 10,000 and 80,000). However, Miller understood Trump's remark not as a direct order but as a casual comment, and no troops were deployed.
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