Barely moments after Donald Trump announced that he’d chosen loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director, Republicans stampeded forth to insist that this in no way means Trump will unleash law enforcement on his enemies, even though Trump himself has threatened to do so. Senator John Cornyn suggested such threats were only for “public consumption.” Senator Rick Scott said Trump is “not gonna do it.” And Representative Dan Meuser scoffed that the very idea is “nonsense.”
These lawmakers should take a moment to consult Trump’s Truth Social feed. At 3:11 a.m. on Wednesday, demonstrating characteristic emotional balance, Trump posted this reaction to a new report from a House subcommittee chaired by GOP Representative Barry Loudermilk, which recommends that the FBI investigate former GOP Representative Liz Cheney over her role in the House’s January 6 inquiry:
Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.” Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done.
Note the trademark mobspeak here: Cheney could be in a lot of trouble for federal lawbreaking, Trump declares, as if he’s merely a passive observer remarking on the danger she faces, rather than someone who will control the nation’s sprawling federal law enforcement apparatus in just over a month. Trump has been raging at Cheney for years and has amplified suggestions that she should face televised military tribunals.
Now, in a dark turn in this whole farcical saga, Trump is pretending that House Republicans have given him a legitimate basis for prosecuting Cheney, when in fact their claims were cooked up in bad faith for precisely that purpose.
Indeed, read this way, Trump’s new missive actually wrecks the spin from Republicans that there’s no reason to fear that Patel will improperly wield law enforcement against his political enemies, even though Patel has vowed to do exactly that. It clearly signals that this is exactly what Trump expects from him.
For starters, the House GOP report’s claim that Cheney “likely” broke federal laws is “likely” entirely baseless. The report argues that as vice chair of the House committee that investigated Trump’s insurrection on January 6, 2021, Cheney may have violated statutes barring witness tampering and the subornation of perjury. But legal experts tell me the allegations are extremely thin.
The witness-tampering claim is based on the charge that Cheney improperly communicated with Cassidy Hutchinson—a Trump White House aide who delivered damning testimony against Trump—without her lawyer’s knowledge. But as Cheney and Hutchinson have already detailed in their books—and the report itself recounts—Hutchinson is the one who initiated direct contact with Cheney, apparently without that lawyer’s knowledge, asking Cheney to recommend new attorneys she might choose from to replace him.
The GOP report insists that such a consultation behind a lawyer’s back was nonetheless unethical in an attorney (Cheney is also a lawyer). But law professor Jonathan Turley—not exactly a Resistance liberal—has noted that Cheney was functioning as a member of Congress in doing this, not as a lawyer, and that in pursuing the matter with Hutchinson, she was doing her congressional duty to pursue a witness.
Nor does the report demonstrate that what Cheney did do was witness tampering, said national security lawyer Bradley Moss. “For this to be criminal tampering, Cheney would have to work to get Hutchinson to change her testimony to provide knowingly false information,” Moss told me. “The report does not provide anything remotely sufficient to substantiate that.”
The same goes for the claim that Cheney may have unlawfully gotten Hutchinson to commit perjury, Moss said. The report details what it insists are Hutchinson’s falsehoods to the January 6 committee. But Moss argues that the findings don’t show that Hutchinson knowingly made false claims, and regardless, the GOP report “produces zero evidence that Cheney herself instructed Hutchinson to provide knowing false statements.”
“This is political cover for what Trump really wants: An excuse to prosecute Cheney,” Moss concluded.
Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy and a former federal prosecutor herself, agrees that the GOP report is exceedingly weak. “The FBI has very strict guidelines for when they can open investigations,” Parker said. “The GOP report does not provide any information that would credibly justify a criminal inquiry.”
Many of the headlines about the House GOP report and Trump’s endorsement of it treat this moment as akin to a conventional political battle. “House Republicans call for Liz Cheney to be investigated over Jan. 6 committee role,” blared The New York Times. NBC News told readers that “Republicans say Liz Cheney should be investigated.”
Meanwhile, a CNN headline read that the House GOP is siding with Trump against Cheney “after investigating January 6,” as if the GOP probe was merely another good-faith effort to gather facts about that day. Politico went with “Trump: Liz Cheney ‘could be in a lot of trouble’ over Jan. 6 committee,” treating Trump’s comment as a conventional statement from a politician about Cheney’s legal situation. Casual readers of these headlines might come away believing we’re having a real debate over whether Cheney did break federal laws and that Trump has a genuine, public-spirited interest in determining whether that legitimately happened.
But the real story here is the public conduct of Trump and Republicans, not that of Liz Cheney or what Trump supposedly “believes” about it. Trump is demonstrating that he’s eager for Cheney’s prosecution to proceed regardless of whether there’s any legitimate basis for it.
The story is that House Republicans are abusing their public roles to create a phony pretext for something that Trump already intended to do anyway: wield law enforcement as a weapon against his enemies with no serious legal predicate. And Senate Republicans appear willing to confirm Patel while knowing full well that Trump has expressly chosen him to carry out this extraordinary and degenerate abuse of power.
All of that is the story. How is it conceivable that the media is treating this as a conventional political moment? Trump’s veiled threat toward Cheney should prompt the press to revisit those reassurances from Republicans. GOP senators should be hounded mercilessly by reporters on whether they’ll knowingly support Patel now that Trump has made the corrupt reality of the situation so inescapably, alarmingly clear.