AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
- The Republican National Committee voted Friday to censure Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney.
- The RNC denounced their involvement with the House select committee investigating the Capitol Riot.
- Several members of the GOP spoke out in disapproval of the censure.
Some Republican lawmakers slammed the Republican National Committee’s decision to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.
The RNC said their participation in the January 6 investigation is “destructive to the institution of the US House of Representatives, the Republican Party, and our republic.” The RNC described the select committee as a “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
But some of members of the party disagreed with the RNC’s vote.
“The RNC is censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because they are trying to find out what happened on January 6th – HUH?” Sen. Bill Cassidy.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate, echoed the idea the Wyoming and Illinois representatives were only looking for answers.
“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol,” Romney posted on Twitter.
“Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost,” the Utah senator added.
Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, said that censure of Kinzinger and Cheney marks “a sad day for my party — and the country.”
“The GOP I believe in is the party of freedom and truth,” Hogan said in a tweet, adding that the newly censured Republicans were “standing on principle, and refusing to tell blatant lies.”
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the RNC, said he “stands” with Cheney and Kinzinger.
“As the former chairman of the Republican party, I cannot express enough my condemnation of this pathetic act of cowardice taken by its current leadership to censure @Liz_Cheney and @RepKinzinger,” Steele wrote in a tweet. “You are wrong. I stand with Liz and Adam.”
Cheney and Kinzinger are the only two Republicans serving on the January 6 committee, alongside seven Democratic lawmakers. They were also two of ten GOP members of the House to vote in favor of impeaching former President Donald Trump.
“If the price of being willing to tell the truth and get to the bottom of what happened on January 6, and make sure that those who are responsible are held accountable is a censure, then I am absolutely going to continue to stand up for what I knew was right,” Cheney told CNN following the RNC vote on Friday. “And I think that it is a sad day for the party of Lincoln that that’s where we are.”
In a tweet ahead of the Friday vote, Kinzinger said he will continue to “focus my efforts on standing for truth and working to fight the political matrix that’s led us to where we find ourselves today.”
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