OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that some lawmakers on the House Select Committee could “face a real risk of jail” for laws that he says they are breaking.
During an interview on Sunday Morning Futures, Gingrich told host Maria Bartiromo that the Jan. 6th Committee is “running over people’s civil liberties,” but also that the members of that committee could face legal repercussions for their actions.
“I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down and the wolves are going to find that they are now sheep, and they’re the ones who are in fact I think going to face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich’s comments came as a response to a question about a recent op-ed he wrote for Newsweek, where he called out wolf-like behavior of the Democrats and their RINO allies.
Gingrich wrote:
Watching the increasingly vicious and destructive actions of the House Democrats—along with the handful of Republican enablers on the January 6 Select Committee…
[…]We now have a president and an attorney general who see at least half the country as their enemies. They are focused on attacking, smearing, and defaming fellow Americans with whom they disagree. More frighteningly, the attorney general has the power to direct the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Offices to frame people and put them in jail on the most trivial of charges.
The January 6 Select Committee is in the process of potentially bankrupting scores of Americans who worked for or supported President Trump. They face financial ruin defending themselves against the committee’s attack. The legal costs of fighting subpoenas and the further cost of legal counsel if put under oath by a hostile congressional committee creates a real burden. That financial burden is compounded by the psychological stress of being under assault by the House Democrats—and potentially also the FBI.
Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the committee, fired back on Twitter.
A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution.
This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels. https://t.co/vpQZjTg9em
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 23, 2022
Cheney ignored Gingrich’s main argument.
During his interview on Fox News, Gingrich said:
“All of these people who’ve been so tough and so mean and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every email because I think it’s clear these are people who just literally running over the law, pursuing innocent people, causing them to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees for no justification,” Gingrich said.
“And it’s basically a lynch mob and unfortunately, the Attorney General of the United States has joined that lynch mob and is totally misusing the FBI. And I think when we have a Republican Congress this is all going to come crashing down. And the wolves are going to find out that they are now sheep. And they are the ones who in fact I think are going to face a real risk of jail,” he added.
He wasn’t calling for banana republic-style prosecution of his political foes, but rather calling for a return to law and order and punishing those that first began the witch hunt.
As he put it in the op-ed: “This is not about revenge. This is about reinforcing the principle that in America, political wolves who viciously destroy their fellow Americans—and violate the rule of law to do so—will not be tolerated. This is about restoring the core principles of American self-government.”
