AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
- Rep. Liz Cheney refused to say whether former President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
- The third highest-ranking House Republican said the decision should be left up to the Department of Justice.
- She also said the House commission investigating the Jan. 6 riot shouldn't be expanded to include an investigation of BLM protests.
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Rep. Liz Cheney, the third highest-ranking House Republican, refused to say whether former President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump earlier this year, told reporters at a House GOP retreat in Florida that the decision about whether to prosecute Trump should be left up to the Department of Justice. She also said that the bipartisan House commission investigating the Jan. 6 riot shouldn't be expanded to include an investigation of Black Lives Matter protests, as her fellow GOP leaders are pushing for.
"I'm very concerned, as all my colleagues are, about the violence we saw from BLM and antifa last summer," she told reporters. "I think it's very important that the January 6 commission focus on what happened on January 6."
The Wyoming congresswoman was one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for "incitement of insurrection" and is the most anti-Trump in GOP leadership.
"The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack," she said in a January statement about the riot. "There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution."
Cheney, who's said she won't support Trump if he becomes the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, has since accused Trump of "embracing insurrection" by continuing to spread lies about the 2020 election.
"The election wasn't stolen. There was a judicial process in place," she said earlier this month. "If you attack the judicial process and you attack the rule of law, you aren't defending the Constitution. You're at war with the Constitution. And for us as a party going forward, we have to embrace the Constitution and we also have to put forward positive solutions."