Elie Honig Torches House GOP’s Call for Liz Cheney to Be Prosecuted: Misguided Fantasy’
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig blasted the House Oversight Committee’s criminal referral for former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney in a column for New York Magazine, deeming it a “misguided fantasy.
“Even if you take every word of the House Oversight Committee’s report on January 6 as gospel — and, please, don’t — Liz Cheney did not commit a crime. It’s not close. The suggestion to the contrary by the Republicans who ran the Committee betrays that they either have no clue about criminal law or don’t care because the politics of payback reign supreme,” began Honig.
While the former federal prosecutor called the disagreements between the GOP-led Oversight Committee to and January 6 Committee a “fair political debate,” he systematically took apart the suggestion that Cheney was guilty of witness tampering and procuring “another person to commit perjury.”
“The Oversight Committee tries to apply lipstick to its pig by declaring solemnly that it is making a formal ‘criminal referral’ of Cheney to the Justice Department. Big deal. You know how hard it is to make a ‘criminal referral’ to DOJ?” asked Honig rhetorically. “Just go on the Justice Department’s website, click around, and you’ll find a form you can fill out and submit with a few keystrokes. Congratulations! You’ve now made a criminal referral. (To be clear: Don’t actually do this.)”
“This act of a formal ‘criminal referral’ to DOJ is pure political theater and legally meaningless. The Justice Department does not need a criminal referral from anyone to do anything. Nor does a criminal referral require DOJ to do anything,” he added.
Honig went on to lay down a marker for Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi and the Cabinet department she’s been chosen to lead.
“If DOJ lets the Committee’s report slide away into the political muck whence it came, that’s a sign the new AG is playing it straight,” he concluded. “But if the Justice Department takes this seriously and pursues the Committee’s misguided fantasy of a Cheney prosecution, then we’ll know they’re off the rails.”
