Noises Off

2/ He wasn't kidding when he said Democrats were the no. 1 threat to America and needed be dealt with by law enforcement and the military.

Today House Republican's referral of Liz Cheney for criminal prosecution - on made up charges - shows you the plan.https://t.co/4v0hpXIkjF

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 18, 2024

The wrongdoing accusation outlined in Tuesday’s report centers on Cheney’s interaction with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. The report claims Cheney improperly interfered with Hutchinson’s relationship with her attorney, Stefan Passantino, causing her to alter her testimony after having spoken to the committee twice. 

“It is no surprise that the claims made in Hutchinson’s first two sworn interviews vary substantially from the claims she made following Representative Cheney’s direct intervention,” the report says. 

As Hutchinson said in a transcribed interview with the committee, however, her Trump-aligned attorney had discouraged her from offering candid testimony while promising lucrative jobs. 

“The less you remember, the better,” Hutchinson said Passantino told her. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world.” 

Hutchinson testified to the Jan. 6 committee that she believed Passantino’s advice would lead her to commit a crime by making false statements to the committee, and that her breaking point came when she said Passantino told her to stop cooperating with the committee altogether. Loudermilk’s report said the Jan. 6 committee “manufactured the story” that Hutchinson told in her own words about her lawyer. 

Hutchinson’s most explosive allegation, in public testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, was that she was told Trump so wanted to accompany his supporters at the U.S. Capitol that he lunged at a member of his security detail. Trump’s driver that day, however, disputed Hutchinson’s second-hand account, according to Jan. 6 committee testimony previously disclosed by Loudermilk. 

Cheney said in a statement Tuesday that Loudermilk’s new report “fabricates lies and defamatory allegations” that are a “malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”

Liz Cheney can be investigated by the FBI. (Anybody can.) If Kash Patel is appointed Director of the FBI, we’re likely to see the worst excesses of the Hoover directorate, and so she may be investigated. (Not, I think, for long.) Except this is no longer Hoover’s FBI. The culture has changed, and it’s unlikely to snap back. Who in the FBI remembers Hoover, except as a name?

But the irony here is, Rep. Loudermilk is protected in his outrageous slander (accusing Cheney of violations of criminal law is slander per se) by the same Constitutional provision that protects former Rep. Cheney from investigation: the Speech and Debate clause.

Which is probably why the FBI would not investigate Cheney. It would be a bootless enterprise.

Contrary to Rep. Murphy’s claims, if the actions of a few government officials could cripple American democracy “in ways we may never recover from,” Tailgunner Joe and J. Edgar would have done it 70 years ago. Or President Andrew Johnson would have done it with Reconstruction.

Hysteria in response to hysteria, is not the way to quell hysteria.