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Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, exchanged a few choice words on Saturday on social media over videos of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, announced Friday that his office would be releasing the complete archive of Capitol riot security footage, roughly 44,000 hours in total, after releasing an initial batch of footage totaling 90 hours. He had previously promised to release the footage during his run for the office of speaker.
Since the release of the footage, many Republicans, particularly supporters of former President Donald Trump aligned with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, have claimed the videos will help confirm their narrative that the events that transpired on January 6 was not a violent storming of the Capitol building in response to Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. However, this narrative has been strongly denied by others including Democrats and moderate Republicans, with available footage and eyewitness testimony rebuking the idea that January 6 was not violent.
After a number of short clips from the newly released footage were shared to X, formerly Twitter, Cheney took to X on Friday and wrote, "Here's some January 6th video for you," and shared a clip of previously available footage of that day, edited together by The New York Times.
In the clip, rioters can be seen aggressively engaging with Capitol security and police forces: spraying them with pepper spray, hitting them with flags and other long items, and forcing their way into doors.
On Saturday, Lee shared his thoughts on Cheney's post by stating that particular footage had been widely seen while alleging the former congresswoman is hiding other footage, seemingly referring to the newly released footage that would suggest the riot was not violent.
"Liz, we've seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that—and nothing else. It's the other stuff—what you deliberately hid from us—that we find so upsetting. Nice try. P.S. How many of these guys are feds? (As if you'd ever tell us)," Lee wrote on X.
However, the former congresswoman fired back and wrote, "Hey @BasedMikeLee - heads up. A nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from your account."
Newsweek has reached out to Lee and Cheney via email for comment.
The exchange follows a current call from Lee for an investigation into the now-defunct bipartisan January 6 House select committee, accusing former and current lawmakers who served on the committee of "deliberately" hiding some of the footage from the Capitol riot.
"Why didn't Liz Cheney and Adam Kizinger [sic] ever refer to any of these tapes?Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative. Maybe they were just too busy selectively leaking the text messages of Republicans they wanted to defeat," Lee asked on X on Saturday.
Cheney, who has been amongst the most prominent GOP critics of Trump, served on the committee that investigated the riot in detail along with former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. In December 2022, the committee published an 845-page report that said Trump was personally responsible for the riot and recommended he face criminal charges.
Trump was indicted on four counts in August by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in relation to the riot, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is politically motivated as he remains the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
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About the writer
Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice ... Read more