Trump attacks Cheney over WaPo report Jan. 6 panel staff frustration

Former President Trump attacked outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, over a recent Washington Post piece that said committee staff are frustrated with her Trump focus in the panel’s unreleased final report.

The committee is set to culminate its long-running Jan. 6 probe with a much-anticipated report on its findings — but The Washington Post’s story said a number of anonymous current and former staff were “angered and disillusioned” by how much of the draft report they said was dedicated to the former president.

Trump on Truth Social mocked the Post’s headline, which reads, “Jan. 6 panel staffers angry at Cheney for focusing so much of report on Trump.”

“This is the headline in The Washington Post, and those that know Chaney [sic] are not surprised because she is a complete PSYCHO, has no regard for the truth as to what really happened, and is angry that the people of the Great State of Wyoming put her out to pasture in a record setting defeat,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referencing Cheney’s loss in her state’s Republican primary earlier this year.

“She blames me for this, but she only has herself to blame,” Trump said. 

But a spokesperson for Cheney hit back at The Washington Post’s story, telling the outlet the decision by Cheney and the panel to home in on Trump was warranted because of Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 riot. The spokesperson also suggested some of the criticism was because some staff-submitted material was left on the cutting room floor as the committee readies the report. 

The Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump last month and subsequently issued the formal summons, sharing 19 areas of inquiry it hoped to touch on with the former president’s testimony. 

​​“In short, you were at the center of the first and only effort by a U.S. president to overturn and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power, ultimately culminating in a bloody attack on our own Capitol and on the Congress itself,” the panel lawmakers wrote in their letter to Trump.