Newt Gingrich, Who Is Advising GOP Leadership, Floats Jail Time for Jan. 6 Committee Members

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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who according to The Washington Post is now counseling Republican leadership in Congress ahead of the 2022 midterms, threatened jail time for members of the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol.

“You’re gonna have a Republican majority in the House, a Republican majority in the Senate. And all these people who’ve been so tough and so mean and so nasty are going to be delivered subpoenas for every document, every conversation, every tweet, every email,” Gingrich said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

Gingrich went on to accuse the committee of being a “lynch mob” that is “pursuing innocent people.”

“I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down,” Gingrich said. “The wolves are gonna find out they’re now sheep, and they’re the ones who are, in fact, I think, going to face a real risk of going to jail for the kind of laws that they’re breaking.”

Gingrich did not specify which laws he believes the committee has broken.

It’s pretty rich that Gingrich is accusing the Jan. 6 committee of being a lynch mob when the actual mob that stormed the Capitol included people who built a literal gallows for then-Vice President Mike Pence. Gingrich’s outlandish comparisons aside, Republicans wresting control back from the Democrats seems like a possibility, if not a probability, as Biden’s policy agenda continues to die a slow and painful death at the hands of Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Gingrich, who led the House’s opposition to President Bill Clinton following the 1994 midterms, is reportedly advising House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, helping the party create a list of policy promises to use as messaging in the midterms. Those proposed policies, according to the Post, include education reforms to capitalize on the growing Republican hysteria over critical race theory; economic measures to combat China; attacks on Big Tech; and “oversight” of President Biden’s administration. Plus, of course, the GOP’s favorite hits: tax cuts, immigration restrictions, and rollbacks of environmental protections.

Rep. Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans sitting on the Jan. 6 committee, responded to Gingrich’s remarks on Sunday. “A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution,” she tweeted. “This is what it looks like when the rule of law unravels.”