Cheney blasts Sen. Tom Cotton for criticizing Jan. 6 hearings

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) ripped Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Monday evening for his criticisms of the public hearings put on by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“Hey @SenTomCotton – heard you on @hughhewitt criticizing the Jan 6 hearings,” Cheney tweeted. “Then you said the strangest thing; you admitted you hadn’t watched any of them.”

Cotton spoke with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Monday morning, where he argued that the lack of cross-examination of witnesses in hearings concerning Jan. 6 was a departure from “Anglo-American jurisprudence.”

“I think what you’ve seen over the last few week is why Anglo-American jurisprudence going back centuries has found that adversarial inquiry, cross-examination is the best way to get at the truth,” Cotton said.

He continued, “There is no one on that committee who takes a view different from Nancy Pelosi, or even a view that’s like, we should examine the full context of all of these statements, of all of these recordings, of all of this video.”

Cheney, one of the two Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee, hit back at Cotton for criticizing hearings he acknowledged not watching.

“Here’s a tip: actually watching them before rendering judgment is more consistent with ‘Anglo-American jurisprudence,'” she said.

Cotton admitted on Hewitt’s show while discussing the most recent public hearing that “I did not watch that hearing, and I have not watched any of the hearings, so I’ve not seen any of them out of the context that I see a snippet here or there on the news.”

However, Cotton still objected to the Jan. 6 committee for the lack of context presented by its members.

“They’ve never released the full transcripts. They’ve never released the full videos,” he said of panel interviews conducted behind closed doors. “We have no idea what those witnesses said in the full context of their depositions. And even if we had those, there was no lawyer in the room who was probing in the other direction.”