Liz Cheney slams Tom Cotton for criticising Jan 6 hearings despite not watching them

Cotton says the hearings lack cross-examination of witnesses

Congresswoman Liz Cheney tore into Arkansas senator Tom Cotton for criticising the public hearings conducted by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.

Speaking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mr Cotton on Monday said the hearings lack cross-examination of witnesses, which was far from "Anglo-American jurisprudence".

"And I think what you’ve seen over the last few week is why Anglo-American jurisprudence going back centuries has found that adversarial inquiry, cross-examination is the best way to get at the truth," the senator said.

“There is no one on that committee who takes a view different from Nancy Pelosi, or even a view that’s like, we should examine the full context of all of these statements, of all of these recordings, of all of this video," he said.

However, while disparaging the committee hearings, the senator "confessed" that he has not watched any of them. "I’ve not seen any of them out of the context that I see a snippet here or there on the news," he told the host.

Ms Cheney, one of the two Republicans on the investigating committee, slammed Mr Cotton for criticising the hearings without even watching them.

"Hey Tom Cotton - heard you on Hugh Hewitt criticizing the Jan 6 hearings. Then you said the strangest thing; you admitted you hadn’t watched any of them (sic)," Ms Cheney wrote on Twitter.

She continued: "Here’s a tip: actually watching them before rendering judgment is more consistent with 'Anglo-American jurisprudence'."

Mr Cotton had argued that it was unknown whether the videos and the audio recordings of the testimonies were presented in their “full context”.

"They’ve never released the full transcripts. They’ve never released the full videos. We have no idea what those witnesses said in the full context of their depositions," he said.

"Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans, clearly share the views of the Democrats on the subject of the committee’s inquiry.

"If you had someone like Jim Jordan or Jim Banks on there, not only would they be privy to all the information, but they would be probing that information and probing witnesses to try to get at truth, which is again what the Anglo-American legal system has done for centuries," he told the radio talk show host.

Meanwhile, the investigating committee has turned up the heat on the Secret Service after a spokesman for the agency claimed that agents were willing to testify under oath and refute parts of the testimony of former White House staff Cassidy Hutchinson.

Ms Hutchinson testified weeks ago that she was told by an agent that former president Donald Trump had grown furious with agents in his vehicle after the 6 January 2021 rally at the Ellipse, where he vowed to join his supporters and march on the Capitol.

According to Ms Hutchinson, an agent told her that Mr Trump was enraged by the statements from his agents declining to take him to the Capitol and supposedly lunged at one of them and attempted to grab the steering wheel of a presidential SUV.