‘Lying In All Caps Doesn’t Make it True’: Liz Cheney Claps Back At Trump Sharing Debunked Claims About Jan. 6th

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) hit back at former President Donald Trump on Sunday after the presumptive GOP presidential nominee called for her to be prosecuted while sharing a debunked claim regarding the House January 6th Committee “suppressing” evidence.

Trump shared an article from the hardright website The Federalist and wrote, “SHE SHOULD BE PROSECUTED FOR WHAT SHE HAS DONE TO OUR COUNTRY! SHE ILLEGALLY DESTROYED THE EVIDENCE. UNREAL!!!”

Cheney shared Trump’s bombastic post and added, “Lying in all caps doesn’t make it true, Donald. You know you and your lawyers have long had the evidence.”

Trump on Saturday also posted an article from far-right writer John Solomon claiming the Jan. 6 committee “withheld crucial evidence” and wrote Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”

The claim that Cheney and the January 6th Committee withheld evidence stems from a March 8th “exclusive” article from The Federalist’s editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway titled, “Liz Cheney, January 6 Committee Suppressed Exonerating Evidence Of Trump’s Push For National Guard.”

In the article, Hemingway writes “Cheney’s January 6 Committee suppressed evidence that President Donald Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital, a previously hidden transcript obtained by The Federalist shows.”

The evidence in question is “Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato’s first transcribed interview with the committee was conducted on January 28, 2022. In it, he told Cheney and her investigators that he overheard White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows push Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to request as many National Guard troops as she needed to protect the city.”

Hemingway goes on to claim that “Not only did the committee not accurately characterize the interview, they suppressed the transcript from public review.”

Oddly, the transcript of Ornato’s testimony was publicly released in 2022 and can be found right here. Ornato’s testimony (because he was the former Secret Service agent in charge of Trump’s protective detail) was only allowed to be made public in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security – for security reasons and did include some redactions — the apparent origins of Hemingway’s article. JustSecurity’s Tom Joscelyn took a deep dive into debunking Hemingway’s claims that Ornato’s testimony had been “previously hidden” and “suppressed.”

Joscelyn writes that Hemingway “did not inform readers of the agreement between the Secret Service and the January 6th Committee” and that she “falsely led readers to believe something sinister was afoot” given the security measures taken ahead of the transcript being released. Furthermore, Cheney’s tweet notes that Trump and his lawyers “have long had the evidence,” which referred to the Department of Justice handing over all the transcripts and evidence given to the Secret Service and DHS being handed over to Trump in August of 2023.

Additionally, the conversation that Hemingway details regarding Meadows and Mayor Bowser is indeed in the Ornato transcript released by the committee.  Ornato’s testimony, however, does not contradict the final report from the January 6th committee, which does note Trump suggested the idea of deploying 10,000 troops in D.C. ahead of January 6th to protect him and his supporters. Trump has long made wild accusations that then Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was responsible for the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol because she did not accept his offer for help from the National Guard.

The final committee report concluded that Trump never gave that order (The President of the United States is the commander-in-chief of the District of Columbia National Guard), based on under-oath testimony from his own acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. Hemingway’s original article has since been widely shared and aggregated in right-leaning media, everywhere from Fox News to Newsmax to conspiracy theory website The Gateway Pundit.