Several Republicans including Scott Perry sought pardons from Trump after the Capitol riot, Liz Cheney says

• Rep. Liz Cheney said multiple GOP lawmakers asked Trump for pardons after the riot.
• She named Rep. Scott Perry, who denied this and has refused to cooperate with the hearings.

Several Republican members of Congress asked for a pardon from then-President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot, Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House January 6 committee said Thursday.

Cheney made the comments at the committee's first public hearing into the Capitol riot on Thursday night.

She called out Rep. Scott Perry in particular, saying: "Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6 to seek a presidential pardon."

"Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election," she added.

She neither offered evidence nor named the other lawmakers, saying that people watching the hearings "will see" how the requests unfolded in upcoming ones.

Perry's spokesperson, Jay Ostrich, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment but told The Hill that Cheney's claim was a "laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie."

Perry has an antagonistic relationship with the January 6 investigation, signaling last year that he wouldn't cooperate with it. In May, the committee issued him a subpoena, which he rejected a few days later, CNN reported.

On Monday he maintained his longstanding objections to the hearings by calling them a "kangaroo court" on Twitter.

The committee believes Perry had a key role in pushing Trump to replace then-Acting Attorney General Geoffrey Rosen with a hard-right loyalist.

In January 2021, Perry introduced Trump to Jeffrey Clark, who was willing to entertain Trump's unproven claims of widespread election fraud, The New York Times reported at the time. Trump ultimately did not fire Rosen after an uproar in the Justice Department.

Clark has also refused to cooperate with the committee, Cheney said on Thursday.

Cheney's claim set progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, speculating on who the other unnamed representatives may be.

She listed the last names of Reps. Andrew Clyde, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, asking if they were among them. All are Trump congressional allies who have supported the false claims that the election was stolen from him.