Rep. Loudermilk says Cheney’s communication with J6 witness unethical, if not illegal

The Chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, Barry Loudermilk, said that former congresswoman Liz Cheney’s communication with a key Jan. 6 witness behind her lawyer’s back is unethical and is one of many issues his investigation has uncovered that may warrant future referrals to the Justice Department. 

Loudermilk’s committee started to probe the prior investigation conducted by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 Select Committee with the mission to get to the bottom of what really happened on Jan. 6 after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections. 

“Well, the the main issue is exactly what you just laid out, that you have a member of Congress who is an attorney, who knows— I'm not an attorney, but I know at least you know some of the basics of attorney client privilege and representation — that it's unethical, if not, in some cases illegal, you know, that you cannot have conversations or meetings with someone who already has representation without that attorney present,” Loudermilk told the John Solomon Reports podcast Wednesday. 

According to encrypted Signal messages obtained by Loudermilk’s committee, while vice chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, former Rep. Cheney directly and indirectly communicated with Cassidy Hutchinson, a star witness who would later change her testimony in shocking fashion, Just the News reported earlier this week. Cheney did not notify or seek permission from Hutchinson's defense counsel, which is unusual. 

The communications are the latest in a string of concerns Loudermilk’s investigation has raised concerning the Democrat-run Jan. 6 Select Committee that finished its work in December 2022. His committee previously found that the select committee failed to preserve documents, data and video depositions from its investigation, including the video of Hutchinson’s testimony. 

Loudermilk told Just the News when the text messages were released that Cheney’s contacts with Hutchinson undermines the integrity of the investigation. Cheney did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment. 

According to the messages between Hutchinson and Cheney, Cheney recognized the legal or ethical risk of communicating directly with Hutchinson without her lawyer’s knowledge. This was evidenced in a conversation between Hutchinson and fellow Jan. 6 witness Alyssa Farah Griffin, who appeared to act as an intermediary between Hutchinson and the committee.

“So I reached out to Liz. She agreed to keep our convo totally confidential. She said she admires you, and could tell that you wanted to the right thing from your testimony,” Griffin wrote in an April 28 Signal message to Hutchinson.

Loudermilk said Cheney may have taken the risk to contact Hutchinson, without her lawyer Stefan Passantino’s knowledge, because her further testimony was essential to advance a preferred narrative about Jan. 6. 

“It's not ethical to do that, but it is effective, obviously, if, if you're trying to get a particular outcome,” Loudermilk said. 

“So knowing that she continued to pursue that—now I know Liz Cheney, she’s a very smart person. She is. She's incredibly intelligent—what this shows me is it was worth the risk to get Cassidy Hutchinson to come and testify again,” he continued. 

Experts told Just the News that it is unclear whether the D.C. Bar's rules which prohibit contact with a party being represented by another attorney in a case could be enforced on a member of Congress in an official proceeding. But, they added that the normal practice of Congress is to recognize attorney-client representation and not circumvent attorneys, in part because the House rules encourage every member not to take action that will bring controversy to the institution.

“Now keep in mind [Hutchinson] had already testified two times and really didn't give him anything, and I think they were searching for something else. And it was only after they fired Stefan Passantino and brought on the new attorney that all of these other sensational claims came out,” Loudermilk added. 

According to the subcommittee, Hutchinson fired Passantino just days after she began communicating with Cheney over the encrypted app. In her memoir, Hutchinson even credited Cheney for helping to find her new lawyers. 

After retaining new representation, first recommended by Cheney, Hutchinson would go on to alter several material components of her original testimony and provide new, allegedly factual accounts that would feature prominently in the final report, including some that were disputed by other witnesses. 

Just the News previously documented several of new narratives Hutchinson brought to the committee memorialized in an errata sheet, including the infamous story about then-President Trump allegedly grabbing the wheel of the presidential vehicle in anger after the Secret Service allegedly refused to take him to the Capitol. Errata sheets are sent by court or hearing stenographers to a witness, giving them the chance to correct typographic or minor errors. Hutchinson's "errata" went far beyond that.

Though this claim was directly refuted by the driver of the vehicle, the Democrat-run Jan. 6 Committee credited that information in its final report as being credible.

Loudermilk believes Cheney’s conduct is just the latest example of the Jan. 6 committee violating ethical rules, beginning with a failure to preserve key documents and video evidence after Republicans won the chamber in the 2022 elections. 

“I think there's no doubt in that with what we've recently uncovered, I think it was clear that [chamber rules were] violated by either the chairman of the committee, Benny Thompson, or the vice chair, Liz Cheney, in the fact of all the documents that were hid from the American people were were hid from this committee and or were deleted and destroyed,” Loudermilk said. 

“I think that in itself, besides violating preservation rules of house and official US government documents, that provision right there was totally violated. So I think we have numerous violations of protocol, of ethics, possibly even law,” he concluded. 

Loudermilk also said that his committee would consider making referrals to the Justice Department about the previous committee’s conduct, saying “we're going to we're going to lay out all the evidence.” 

Loudermilk previously announced that he would propose a House resolution to repudiate the findings of the Jan. 6 Select Committee in light of the various inaccuracies and conduct by the committee uncovered by the Republican-led investigation.

Loudermilk’s goal, he told Just the News, is to make sure that future generations of Americans know that the Democrat Jan. 6 committee had created a predetermined political story filled with errors, including Hutchinson’s stories which were contradicted by several other witnesses.