One of Utah’s newest members of the congressional delegation met with the editorial boards of the Deseret News and KSL Monday afternoon. Among the discussion points were the congressman‘s vote in support of retaining Rep. Liz Cheney in her former position as chairperson of the House Republican Conference. He also voted in favor of establishment of bipartisan legislation to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Here is what he said about both of those votes. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Deseret News: You voted in support of Rep. Liz Cheney maintaining her leadership position, deviating from many in your party. Did you feel pressure one way or another with that vote?
Rep. Moore. So, I didn’t actually feel pressured either way, ironically. I believe that leadership felt like they had enough support to go the direction that they wanted it to go. And it didn’t matter, ultimately, what I did. What led up to it was, you know, two months prior — I don’t know exactly the timeline when the first time that the vote came up with respect to Rep. Cheney — I was actually asked by leadership to speak on her behalf. They knew I had a relationship with her. I have a good relationship with (Rep. Kevin) McCarthy, (Rep. Steve) Scalise and Cheney. And I think I can always find ways to have positive relationships with anybody that I interact with. And so my tune on it just didn’t change.
The reason I was supportive of her is because we have a leadership team that I think has broad appeal, and all of the attention and turmoil surrounding that up to the second vote, my feelings on it didn’t change. My team was good with me staying consistent on that. And that’s where I landed.
DN: On a similar note, regarding the vote to establish a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol, you were the only member of the Utah delegation to vote both in favor of Liz Cheney and for a congressional commission. How did that decision come about and why do you support that commission?
RM: So it’ll go back to the word consistency again, and you may hear it over and over from me. This was part of the strategy. ... This was back in the impeachment trial, the discussion around a better way to approach this is a commission. And my tune on that hasn’t changed even since then, when I made my statement. So I already publicly stated my support of this type of commission. I didn’t know the exact structure, or what the politics of the time would be that came up . ... But during impeachment, I chose not to impeach but was publicly supportive of a commission like this.
And then, Rep. Rodney Davis, he even put together some legislation during that time. (Rep.) John Katko is a federal prosecutor, they worked really hard to get this to a point that would have been as bipartisan as it possibly could be. And then leading into last week, on Tuesday, there was broad support, in my opinion, and I felt like there was broad support. Leadership ultimately decided they did not want to go down this road. And I understand ... they can do that. But my opinion on it hasn’t necessarily changed.
The area that we were discussing internally was OK, there’s some duplication that could take place with the commission like this. And there’s some concern with how the committee or the staff members on the committee would be chosen. ... There wasn’t that much more to it than that. People have concerns that if this is kind of owned by (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi, that it will just be a smear campaign. The structure of the committee is very different than the the Russia investigation, The structure of this committee is very similar to the 911 Commission. And, and I would argue that what we yielded from the 911 Commission was very important for our intelligence services. ... We let our leadership team know where I was going to be on a vote, and I didn’t get one call or one point of pressure on me to change my vote.
There is a respect among our leadership that they understand people have, you know, differences of opinion. And they didn’t put a lot of pressure on it, at least with me. And maybe that’s because they know that I’ve got a track record of being very consistent. And if I’m known for that, then I’ll be very happy.