Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich elicited a scathing response from Capitol riot committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney on Sunday after the retired Republican lawmaker suggested she and other members of the January 6 panel could face jail time if the GOP becomes the majority party after the 2022 midterm elections.
'A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution,' the Wyoming Republican on the Democrat-led committee said.
'This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.'
Gingrich, who led the House through Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, spoke with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning where he accused Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Capitol riot panel of 'running amok' and 'breaking the rules.'
He compared the committee to a 'lynch mob' before stunningly suggesting without evidence that the members of Congress on the panel could be incarcerated in the new Congressional term on January 4, 2023 -- after an election that multiple polls have suggested may be a red wave.
'I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down, and the wolves are going to find out that they're now sheep. And they're the ones who are, in fact, going to, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kind of laws they're breaking,' Gingrich said.
It's not clear what crime the committee, which has been fairly transparent with its investigation, has committed.
Cheney, the highest-ranked Republican on the Democrat-led Capitol riot committee, took aim at the retired GOP House Speaker who once served in Congress with her father
But Gingrich said the panel is 'running over peoples' civil liberties' and indicated that a new GOP-dominated Congress would turn the tables against the investigators themselves.
'All these people who have been so tough and so mean and so nasty are gonna be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every e-mail,' the former Georgia lawmaker threatened.
'Because I think it's clear that these are people who are literally just running over the law, pursuing innocent people, causing them to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees for no justification, and it's basically a lynch mob.'
He added: 'And, unfortunately, the attorney general of the United States has joined that lynch mob and is totally misusing the FBI.'
Gingrich's time in Congress had overlapped with that of Cheney's father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who held her seat as Wyoming's lone representative from 1979 to 1989.
Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, Cheney's fellow January 6 committee member, said Gingrich's penal threat was 'just bizarre' in an interview with CNN later on Sunday.
'I think Newt has really lost it. You know, it leaves me speechless,' Lofgren told CNN host Jim Acosta.
She added, 'and he looks terrible.'
Gingrich's opinion may be some indication of where the GOP is headed as midterm season looms.
Multiple members of the committee (pictured: Cheney testifying to the House Rules Committee alongside Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson on December 14, 2021) have criticized Gingrich's stunning threat
Gingrich said on Fox News this past Sunday: 'I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down, and the wolves are going to find out that they're now sheep. And they're the ones who are, in fact, going to, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kind of laws they're breaking.'
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who would likely become Speaker if his party took the majority, has reportedly turned to his GOP predecessor for advice on what policies their party should champion going into the heated races.
Gingrich is known for leading the party to a sweeping victory in the 1994 midterm elections with his Contract With America, which laid out for voters specific policy goals and plans the Republican Party would seek to implement if they won the majority.
Some of the agenda items McCarthy and Gingrich are discussing include 'oversight' over the Biden administration, education policies capitalizing on parents' anger over their public schools' curriculum, and deterring competition from China, according to the Washington Post.
McCarthy and a number of other House Republicans have signaled they are already looking into the January 6 Capitol riot themselves, but rather than focusing on Donald Trump's role in the incident they're looking at security failures that led to violent demonstrators overwhelming police and shattering glass to break into the federal building.
The House Minority Leader has accused the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of withholding information about security issues that led to the riot and 'playing politics' with the committee.
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