Liz Cheney: Smith report raises question for Trump DOJ nominees
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) raised questions Tuesday about President-elect Trump's choices to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ) amid fallout from special counsel Jack Smith's report about the former president's involvement in the 2021 Capitol insurrection.
“DOJ’s exhaustive and independent investigation reached the same essential conclusions as the Select Committee. All this DOJ evidence must be preserved,” Cheney wrote Tuesday in a post on the social platform X.
“But most important now, as the Senate considers confirming Trump’s Justice Department nominees: if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic,” she wrote.
Cheney, who served on the House Jan. 6 committee while in office, was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for her investigation into Trump's actions during the Capitol insurrection. She has been a fierce critic of the former president and his allies over the years.
“As our framers knew, our institutions only hold when those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant. So this question is now paramount for Republicans: Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you and do what the Constitution requires? Or do you lack the courage?” she concluded in her post.
Trump tapped Pam Bondi to serve as his attorney general. She was a senior adviser on Trump's first impeachment defense team.
Cheney isn’t the only official calling for the preservation of the report. Sen. Dick Durban (D-Ill.) urged leaders to take the necessary steps to retain the 174-page document, calling out comments made by incoming Trump officials.
“The President-elect’s intended nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has promised to weaponize the Department of Justice against those who were involved in these investigations, threatening: ‘When Republicans take back the White House… [t]he Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted—the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.’ In light of these threats, it is critical that the Department take immediate preservation steps related to these investigations and prosecutions,” Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote.
Trump fumed about the release of the report on social media Tuesday morning, labeling Smith a “lamebrain” prosecutor amid a string of other insults directed at Democrats.
“Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide. THE VOTERS HAVE SPOKEN,” he wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.