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At the conclusion of their own investigation into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, House Republicans have concluded that former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney should be prosecuted for investigating what happened when the Then-President Donald Trump sent his crowd of supporters as Congress certified the 2020 election.

The results released Tuesday show that the Republican Party is working to reinforce Trump’s desire to punish his perceived enemies, including Cheney and members of the Jan. 6 Committee who the president-elect has said should be in prison .

“Liz Cheney could be in big trouble based on the subcommittee’s evidence that Liz Cheney likely violated numerous federal laws and those violations should be investigated by the FBI.” Thank you Congressman Barry Loudermilk for a job well done. Newsmax, by Greg Kelly,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Trump suggested in a social media post at 3 a.m. ET that Cheney could face legal consequences based on evidence collected by the GOP subcommittee.

House Administration Committee Chairman Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, wrote: “Until we hold those responsible accountable and reform our institutions, we will not fully regain trust.”

The Republicans’ 128-page interim report comes as Trump prepares to return to the White House and works to staff his administration with top-level officials, including Kash Patel as FBI director, who appear to be like-minded in his retaliatory efforts. Trump has also promised to pardon people convicted of their involvement in the Capitol riots.

It echoes long-standing Republican arguments that Trump was not responsible for the attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department has prosecuted about 1,500 people, including the leaders of the militant Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and charged Trump with four crimes, including conspiring to overturn the election. Special Counsel Jack Smith has since dropped the case against Trump before the inauguration because he is following Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

But the new report’s conclusion singles out Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a once-rising conservative star herself, who was kicked out of the GOP leadership after she voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. When she became vice chairwoman of the committee on Jan. 6, Cheney lost her reelection bid in 2022 in Wyoming to a Trump-backed challenger. Last fall, Cheney worked to block Trump from returning to the White House after campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Cheney on Tuesday delivered a lengthy defense of her committee’s painstaking work, the 900-page Jan. 6 report released in December 2022, saying Loudermilk’s own report “disregards the truth.”

“January 6 showed Donald Trump who he really is – a cruel and vengeful man who allowed violent attacks against our Capitol and law enforcement officers to continue while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and to go,” Cheney said in a statement.

“Now Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘interim report’ willfully disregards the truth and the tremendous weight of evidence from the Select Committee and instead fabricates lies and defamatory accusations to cover up what Donald Trump has done.”

President Joe Biden is considering issuing pardons to protect members of Congress and others from Trump’s wrath. However, several of the people involved have said they do not seek or want a pardon from Biden.

Those Trump wants to prosecute include Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, Cheney and other members of the Jan. 6 committee, and Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who indicted Trump.

The report’s release comes as Congress will be asked in the coming weeks to certify the results of the 2024 election. But unlike four years ago, when Republicans refused to accept Biden’s victory over Trump and claimed voter fraud, Democrats say they trust and accept the election results.

The GOP panel’s findings revisit the multiple security failures of Jan. 6, 2021, and revive the dispute over the delay in calling in the National Guard, which, along with police reinforcements, restored order at the Capitol as night fell. Congress got back to work that evening and worked into the next morning to certify the 2020 election for Biden.

“This report shows that there was no single cause for what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6,” Loudermilk wrote in an introduction. “The Capitol is not safer today.”

But Loudermilk focuses just as intently on the Jan. 6 committee that then-Speaker Pelosi subsequently convened to investigate what happened, and on its leaders, Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Cheney .

The report prosecutes Cheney for her role in cooperating with one of the star witnesses against Trump, former White House adviser Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided some of the most detailed descriptions of the defeated president’s actions that day.

Hutchinson testified before the committee hearing on January 6, 2022, that she had not been open during her initial interviews with the panel, had a “moral struggle” and wanted to return.

She eventually ditched her Trump-allied lawyer and later held a public hearing in which she described Trump at the White House as the Capitol insurrection unfolded.

In her own account of the committee’s work in her book Oath and Honor, Cheney had played a crucial role in the meeting with Cassidy and was concerned for her safety when she decided to come forward.

The Loudermilk Panel concludes that these acts constitute witness tampering that give rise to criminal prosecution.

“Numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney,” the committee wrote in its conclusion. “These violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

It also says Thompson violated House rules in his handling of files and transcripts.

Thompson said the report was full of “baseless” allegations. “There is no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the deadly January 6 attack, no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would like to rewrite history,” he said.

Trump reiterated his campaign promises to prosecute those who blamed him for the Jan. 6 incident in an interview earlier this month.

“Frankly, they should go to prison,” he said, referring to members of Congress investigating the attack on the Capitol.