'Spies for the Democrats': GOP lawmakers facing scrutiny for Jan. 6 lash out at colleagues

House Republicans who are being reviewed as part of a probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are up in arms, and now some are targeting their fellow GOP lawmakers.

On Tuesday night, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — who is among the nearly one dozen GOP lawmakers whose phone records the House select committee is seeking — called for two Republicans on the committee to be banished from the House Republican conference.

In a letter to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Biggs called the two GOP lawmakers — Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) — “spies for the Democrats” and said they should be expelled from the conference.

Biggs downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack and claims it is a “false narrative” to call the riot led by a Donald Trump-supporting mob hoping to stop the transition of power an “insurrection.”

In the letter, first reported by CNN, Biggs wrote:

Republican Conference meetings are an opportunity for elected House Republicans to strategize the most effective path to push back on the radical policies of Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats. many of the coming discussions will likely revolve around our defense against the Democrats’ perpetuation of the false narrative that January 6th was an insurrection and how to protect our own from their legally questionable investigative methods. … We cannot trust these members to sit in our Republican Conference meetings while we plan our defense against the Democrats.

Biggs’ letter follows a threat against telecommunication companies from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose phone records are also being sought as part of the probe.

Greene said on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program Tuesday night that, “These telecommunications companies, if they go along with this, they will be shut down. And that’s a promise.”

This all follows a similar threat from McCarthy himself, who falsely claimed that the House select committee was violating federal law by seeking the GOP lawmakers’ phone records and warned that a future Republican majority “will not forget” if the companies turn those records over.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) — who helped organize the effort to stop certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory that helped spur the attack — said in an interview on Wednesday that there is no “probable cause” for the committee to get his records.

The House select committee said it’s not deterred by the threats.

“The committee’s efforts won’t be deterred by those who want to whitewash or cover up the events of January 6th, or obstruct our investigation,” the committee tweeted on Tuesday.

On Thursday, it announced that Cheney will be its vice chair.

Cheney said in a news release announcing her new role:

Every member of this committee is dedicated to conducting a non-partisan, professional, and thorough investigation of all the relevant facts regarding January 6th and the threat to our Constitution we faced that day. I have accepted the position of Vice Chair of the committee to assure that we achieve that goal. We owe it to the American people to investigate everything that led up to, and transpired on, January 6th. We will not be deterred by threats or attempted obstruction and we will not rest until our task is complete.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.