Who could have guessed that Liz Cheney would be too crazy even for the libs? That’s the story of a new piece from The Washington Post. According to over a dozen staffers who served the January 6th committee, the recently defeated Wyoming congresswoman’s behavior has left a bad taste in their mouths.
There’s a lot here to unpack, but the gist seems to be that Cheney has turned the committee into a personal vendetta to boost her 2024 chances.
Now, less than six weeks before the conclusion of the committee’s work, Cheney’s influence over the committee’s final report has rankled many former and current committee staff. They are angered and disillusioned by Cheney’s push to focus the report primarily on former president Donald Trump, and have bristled at the committee morphing into what they have come to view as the vehicle for the outgoing Wyoming lawmaker’s political future.
Fifteen former and current staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, expressed concerns that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public.
Be right back. I’ve got to go inject that straight into my veins.
What a shocker. Who could have guessed that Cheney’s singularly-focused performative outrage toward Donald Trump wouldn’t sit well with the staffers doing the actual work in the background? And it only gets juicier from there.
Several committee staff members were floored earlier this month when they were told that a draft report would focus almost entirely on Trump and the work of the committee’s “Gold Team,” excluding reams of other investigative work.
Potentially left on the cutting room floor, or relegated to an appendix, were many revelations from the “Blue Team” — the group that dug into the law enforcement and intelligence community’s failure to assess the looming threat and prepare for the well-forecast attack on the Capitol…
…“We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public,” said one former committee staffer. “But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”
Cheney’s goal has obviously been to set up a 2024 campaign, using the committee as a way to try to clear the field of one of its most favored candidates in Trump. Still, that all seems a bit delusional now, doesn’t it? Does anyone think Cheney would have a prayer against Ron DeSantis? And what donors are going to flush millions down the drain to keep Cheney’s vanity quest going when the reality of the situation becomes apparent? I’d guess not many.
As to the complaints about materials being left out of the report, I think they are fair. The one thing Congress actually has statutory authority over is investigating the failures of government agencies. According to these staffers, though, that’s not going to happen. That seems like a rather inexcusable admission from the final report. The American public should know why the USCP was so ill-prepared and why offers of help were rejected.
With that said, there’s a bit of playing both sides going on here. Yes, there are some things reportedly being left out of the report that probably should be in there, but I’d bet many of these staffers are chapped that they aren’t going to be allowed to make a broader inditement of the right. No doubt, they want to take down Trump, but I’m sure they also want to paint every Republican as a domestic terrorist in the process. If Cheney blocking that has ruffled their feathers, that’s actually a good thing.
Regardless, this infighting is as ironic as it is hilarious, and it reinforces a rule I’ve stated again and again. Namely, that nothing a Republican does will ever be enough for the left. The stab in the back is always around the corner. Not even Liz Cheney, who has got down on bended knee to help feed the most intense Democrat obsession, could avoid being tossed overboard. And what a satisfying toss it is.