Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar has said “heads have to roll” over the January 6 Committee’s now-concluded investigation into the Capitol riot.
In an interview with the right-wing outlet The Gateway Pundit published on Sunday, Mr Gosar agreed that former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee and one of only two Republicans in the panel, should be prosecuted for her role in the probe.
Mr Gosar, who has relentlessly downplayed the attack had said in January that he was poised to conduct a “real” investigation into January 6.
“ I think there’s also military that are involved,” the politician told the Pundit. “And I think that their heads have to roll. Otherwise, you condone this lawlessness ... we see lawlessness everywhere and that’s part of the precipitating actions that Congress is allowed.”
Mr Gosar’s remarks come days after Georgia Representative Barry Loudermilk revealed an investigation into the dissolved committee is already underway and that “meetings will be held eventually”.
“We need to give a serious, in-depth investigation into what happened that day, which the J6 committee didn’t do. We need to know, where were the security failures … as well as what do we need to do to fix it?” Mr Loudermilk said, per The Hill.
“I would hope that, you know, they’d just come and talk. This is not going to be a gotcha. This is getting to the truth.”
A heated controversy also ensued last week after some of more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from the riot were aired on Fox News.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed the tapes to Tucker Carlson, allowing the host to cherry-pick moments from the siege on Congress by Trump supporters and then downplay the threat on those who witnessed the insurrection.
In a statement to The Independent, the White House condemned the network’s coverage.
“We agree with the chief of the Capitol Police and the wide range of bipartisan lawmakers who have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our Constitution and the rule of law – which cost police officers their lives,” a spokesperson said.
“We also agree with what Fox News’s own attorneys and executives have now repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law: that Tucker Carlson is not credible.”
Republican and Democrats alike have also decried the release of the tapes, saying Carlson’s comments were misleading at best.
Elsewhere in the interview with the Gateway Pundit, Mr Gosar said the tapes showed “a complete 180” from the evidence presented during the January 6 Committee meetings. He also doubled down on Carlson’s remarks that Democrats “lied” about the death of Capitol officer Brian Sicknick.
“They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” Carlson said in his show.
Officer Sicknick died eight hours after suffering two strokes following the Capitol riot, according to NBC. Two men have been convicted for assaulting and spraying Sickinick with chemicals and his family has contended that fighting during the riot caused the strokes.
“The first thing is acknowledg[ing] that we were rotten with fraud, and we need the American people to start calling and asking and hoping to plead that Congressman [Jim] Jordan really starts making the impact,” Mr Gosar said.
“Hiring the attorneys, getting everybody is subpoenaed, because we need to get the bottom of this and it shouldn’t stop here.”
The Gateway Pundit has been accused of publishing misleading and outright false articles and conspiracies about the 2020 Presidential election and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Ms Cheney said that she would cooperate with the expected new probe.
“If @HouseGOP wants new Jan 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year,” she wrote on Twitter.
“But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence.”
