Wyoming’s sole congressman will join a newly formed congressional committee tasked with further investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
According to the Congressional record, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appointed U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, four other Republicans, and three Democrats, on Thursday.
Hageman’s appointment is noteworthy because she defeated Wyoming’s former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who broke with the Republican party by voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the insurgency.
Cheney also served as vice chair of the original Jan. 6 committee, which conducted over a thousand interviews, held televised hearings, and reviewed over a million documents before publishing an 814-page report in 2022.
Her decision to join the panel — she eventually became one of its most prominent members — infuriated many Republicans in Wyoming and elsewhere. Trump even traveled to Casper for a rally to support Hageman in her 2022 campaign against Cheney.
Ultimately, the committee discovered sufficient evidence to convict Trump and recommended several charges to the Department of Justice. A grand jury indicted Trump in 2023, but the charges were dropped in November after he won the presidential election.
Earlier this month, the House voted to create the new committee through a resolution.
“The resolution authorizes and directs the select subcommittee to conduct a full and complete investigation and study and issue a final report of the events surrounding January 6, 2021,” according to the motion.
The resolution authorizes its chair, Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, to “receive information available to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; to extend certain periods for questioning witnesses; and to collect information through depositions, subpoenas, and interrogatories.”
Loudermilk told Politico that the original report contained “more politics than truth.” House Democrats have argued that the new panel is a distraction.
Maryland Democratic Rep. Jayme Raskin, who served on the original committee, will serve as an ex-officio member of the new panel.
Raskin stated in a press release that the new committee will allow them to “examine the constantly growing criminal records of all the hundreds of violent felons, cop-beaters, and white nationalists who Donald Trump pardoned and released onto our streets on his first day in office.”
On January 6, approximately 140 Capitol Police officers were injured, making it one of the most violent days for law enforcement in recent American history. A man from western Wyoming was convicted in July 2024 of assaulting officers during the Jan. 6 riot.
Hageman, for her part, has downplayed January 6 and attempted to absolve Trump of any responsibility for the attacks.
Last year, she co-sponsored a resolution “expressing the House of Representatives’ sense that former President Trump did not engage in insurrection or rebellion against, nor give aid or comfort to, the enemies of the United States.”
She also signed an amicus brief urging the United States Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s application of a specific statute in determining the prison sentences for Jan. 6 rioters.
The committee must complete its final report by the end of 2026.
