Liz Cheney calls Trump threat to jail her an ‘assault on the rule of law’

The former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has described a threat by President-elect Donald Trump to imprison her alongside others involved in an investigation of his supporters’ 2021 US Capitol attack an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic”.

Cheney was responding to comments made by Trump during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday in which he said members of the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack “should go to jail” – but said he would not direct the attorney general or FBI he appoints during his second presidency to pursue the matter.

During that interview, Trump said: “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with [Bennie] Thompson and the people on the … committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.

“They deleted and destroyed all evidence”, Trump alleged without evidentiary support, adding that those responsible were Cheney and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”

In a statement containing her response and obtained by the New York Times, Cheney said Trump had “lied about the Jan. 6 … committee” and that there was “no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis” to go after the panel’s members.

“There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct,” Cheney added.

She added that Trump “attempted to overturn” the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden so that he could remain in the Oval Office by mobilizing an “angry mob”.

“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” said Cheney, the daughter of the former US vice-president Dick Cheney. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

The exchange comes as Biden is reportedly considering offering sweeping pardons to those who could become targets of Trump’s promised “retribution” against his political enemies.

Efforts to prosecute Trump over the Capitol attack have been abandoned after he defeated Vice-President Kamala Harris in the 5 November White House election. But Cheney – a former Harris campaign surrogate – said material collected by the special counsel Jack Smith should be preserved and “as much of that information as possible should be disclosed in the special counsel’s upcoming report”.