Liz Cheney hits back after Trump says January 6 committee members should be jailed
Good morning, US politics blog readers. In his first sit-down interview since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump made clear to NBC News on Sunday that he planned to upend an array of governing norms as soon as he gets into the White House. The president-elect said he would pardon most January 6 insurrectionists, and that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney and other lawmakers who served on the bipartisan House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol “should go to jail”. That prompted a furious riposte from Cheney, who was ousted from Congress’s lower chamber two years ago over her break from Trump.
“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power,” Cheney said in a statement, where she also called for the justice department special counsel, Jack Smith, to release evidence he gathered into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll see if any other former members of the committee speak out today.
Here’s what else is going on today:
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Joe Biden speaks at the Tribal Nations Summit in Washington DC at 3.45pm ET, then parties with members of Congress at their Holiday Ball at 6pm.
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Andy Kim of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California, both Democrats, are expected to be sworn into the Senate today, after resigning their seats in the House to take up their new roles.
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Congress is continuing work on a massive year-end defense spending bill that will be one of the last things it does before the new Republican majority takes their seats next year.