As remarkable as Cheney’s revelation is, it also raised the possibility that the incident could draw interest from Justice Department prosecutors. The comments were the first time the committee has explicitly described providing information to the Justice Department that it discovered during the investigation.
Attempting to subpoena a witness does not necessarily amount to witness tampering in and of itself, and it is unclear what the Justice Department would do in response to Cheney’s comments.
However, this is not the first public suggestion of witness tampering that the commission has made. Previously, the panel noted two incidents where their star, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, received messages that he was loyal to Trump.
Those, however, did not come from Trump himself — and Trump’s personal involvement raises the stakes as to whether the message was intended to influence a witness’s testimony.
Cheney did not reveal its essence.
It is not yet clear how the commission shared the information with the Justice Department and whether it could be considered a criminal referral.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Washington, who is overseeing the Jan. 6 criminal investigation, declined to comment.
This story has been updated with additional developments on Tuesday.
