Release of the Matt Gaetz Report? A Liz Cheney Investigation? 2024 Ain’t Over Yet.

The House of Representatives is clearing out its cubbyhole prior to Christmas vacation. Behind all the old finger paintings and the moldy apples, they’re pushing out reports, all wrinkled and creased, that they haven’t gotten to during the past year or so.

First, there’s Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the yahoo representing Georgia’s 11th congressional district and a man who once compared the first impeachment of Donald Trump to the “sham trial” of Jesus before Pilate, and also a man who led a group of folks on a “tour” of various obscure passages in the Capitol on January 5, 2021, that piqued the interest of many observers. Anyway, Loudermilk released an interim report on Tuesday in which he recommends an FBI investigation of ... Liz Cheney. From NBC News:

The report alleged Republicans found evidence showing Cheney “tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge. This secret communication with a witness is improper,” the report said. In addition, the report said the FBI should investigate Cheney for allegedly violating a law that prohibits any person from procuring another person to commit perjury, which Republicans have accused Hutchinson of doing in her testimony to the committee. The report accused Cheney of helping Hutchinson attain new counsel; while the report alleges they spoke directly to each other without a lawyer’s knowledge, it indicated Republicans don’t seem to know what they discussed.

You may recall that, as early as September 2022, Hutchinson, in a closed-door interview conducted by the January 6 select committee, said that a former member of Trump’s White House counsel assigned to her was advising her to answer “I don’t recall” and “to use that response as much as you deem necessary” during her upcoming testimony. From CBS News:

Hutchinson walked the panel through her early efforts to secure low-cost legal representation beginning November 2021, when she became aware she would be subpoenaed to appear before the select committee. She eventually received a call from Stefan Passantino, a former White House ethics lawyer, in early February, who said he would be representing her but declined to reveal who was paying him. Hutchinson expressed to the committee her concern of being represented by an attorney with ties to Trump and recalled telling her mother after Passantino was brought on as her lawyer that “I’m f**ked.”

Good call.

Hutchinson first met with Passantino on Feb. 16 at the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Michael Best, she told investigators, and said he urged her to “downplay your role. ‘You were a secretary,’ ” Hutchinson said Passantino told her, according to the transcript. “ ‘You had an administrative role. Everyone’s on the same page about this.’ ” Passantino also told Hutchinson, “We’re going to take care of you,” she revealed to the committee.

Being taken care of by a Trump-connected lawyer does not sound very similar to being taken care of by the Sisters of Mercy. Hutchinson was sharp enough to realize this and went shopping for her own lawyer. She found him and they negotiated her public testimony to the January 6 select committee, which was one of the highlights of the hearings. Now it seems as though Loudermilk is accusing Hutchinson and Cheney of conspiring to find an attorney who would actually act in Hutchinson’s interest. Horrors. Also, Loudermilk’s report implies that Hutchinson’s testimony at the hearings was perjurious as a result of this effort. Good luck proving that, rube.

Elsewhere, on Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee somewhat surreptitiously released its report into departed nuisance Matt Gaetz. From CNN:

The vote, which has not previously been reported, amounts to a stark reversal for the panel after it had voted along party lines in late November not to release the results of the investigation. The decision to release the report suggests that some Republicans ultimately decided to side with Democrats on the matter, and it is unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted.

Resolved: Nobody likes Matt Gaetz. Maybe he can ask Liz Cheney if she knows a good lawyer.