SALT LAKE CITY —

The Republican National Committee censured two GOP lawmakers on Friday for participating on the committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and assailed the panel for leading a "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

Related video above: Get the Facts: A timeline of Jan. 6, 2021

GOP officials took a voice vote to approve censuring Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger at the party's winter meeting in Salt Lake City. The censure was approved a day after an RNC subcommittee watered down a resolution that had recommended expelling the pair from the party.

The censure accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution."

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel denied that the "legitimate political discourse" wording in the censure was referring to the violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and said it had to do with other actions taken by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. But the resolution drew no such distinction.

RNC members take issue with what they see as the overly broad subpoenas, including one for Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward. Ward, an osteopathic doctor, sued to block the subpoena and argues providing her phone records would compromise patients' privacy.

"What are you going for? What are you looking for? You should have a specific scope," said Pam Pollard, an RNC member from Oklahoma.

But GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials, excoriated his party for the censure.

"Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol," he tweeted. "Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost."

McDaniel is his niece.

McDaniel and her co-chair Tommy Hicks focused their remarks to RNC members on the 2022 midterms and key tenets of their platform — crime rates, parental rights over school curriculum choices and pandemic restrictions on businesses. Though they hardly mentioned the former president by name, Trump's sway among party officials was made evident by the censure and criticisms of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Cheney, of Wyoming, and Kinzinger, of Illinois, are the only two Republicans on the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Trump and other GOP members were incensed when Kinzinger and Cheney agreed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's invitation to join the Democratic-led House committee, giving the Jan. 6 panel a veneer of bipartisan credibility.

The most consequential element of the censure is a call for the party to no longer support Cheney and Kinzinger as Republicans.

The censure — combined with support from RNC members from Wyoming — allows the party to invoke a rule to back candidates other than Cheney. It sets in motion a way for the party to support Cheney's primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump. Wyoming's primary is in August.

Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler said in a statement that the move subverted the will of Wyoming voters.

"Frank Eathorne and the Republican National Committee are trying to assert their will and take away the voice of the people of Wyoming before a single vote has even been cast," he said, referring to the Wyoming GOP chair who co-sponsored the resolution.

Kinzinger is not running for reelection.

RNC members also voted in favor of a rule change that would prohibit their candidates from participating in debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The institution has been a staple of presidential elections for three decades, but Republicans have decried the format as biased. After advancing on Friday, the rules change is expected to be completed when the RNC meets in summer.

Republicans object to past moderators they perceive as left-leaning and remarks about Trump made by commission co-chair Mike McCurry.

"Restoring faith in our elections means making sure our candidate can compete on a level playing field," McDaniel said in a speech on Friday.

"We are not walking away from debates, we are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it's a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interests of the American people," she added.

Even with a rules change, decisions about whether to participate in commission-sponsored debates will fall to the GOP's eventual 2024 nominee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday named a second Republican critic of Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, to a special committee investigating the Capitol riot and pledged that the Democratic-majority panel will "get to the truth."

Kinzinger said he "humbly accepted" the appointment even as his party's leadership is boycotting the inquiry.

With the committee set to hold its first meeting, hearing from police officers who battled the rioters, Pelosi said it was imperative to learn what happened on Jan. 6, when insurrectionists disrupted the congressional certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory, and why the violent siege took place. That mission, she said, must be pursued in a bipartisan manner to ensure "such an attack can never happen again."

Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, will bring "great patriotism to the committee's mission: to find the facts and protect our Democracy," she said in a statement. 

He joins Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, as the two committee's Republicans, both selected by the leader of the opposition party. Kinzinger and Cheney were among the 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump's second impeachment. They were the only two Republicans who voted last month to form the special committee.

"For months, lies and conspiracy theories have been spread, threatening our self-governance," Kinzinger said in a statement. "For months, I have said that the American people deserve transparency and truth on how and why thousands showed up to attack our democracy."

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has said the GOP will not participate after Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to accept two of the members he picked.

McCarthy, R-Calif., has said the committee was a "sham process" and withdrew his five members when Pelosi rejected two of them, Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio. Both voted on Jan. 6 against certifying Biden's election victory over Trump and both are outspoken allies of the former president.

In a statement Sunday, McCarthy said Pelosi's decision to reject his picks and appoint members "who share her preconceived narrative will not yield a serious investigation" and is intended "to satisfy her political objectives."

Kinzinger and Cheney have faulted Trump as a factor in spurring the insurrection with his persistently false claims that the 2020 election was "stolen" due to voting fraud.

In recent weeks, Kinzinger has suggested he would be open to serving on the committee, despite threats from McCarthy that Republicans who accept a spot could be stripped of their regular committee assignments as retaliation for participating. 

"It's clear that Pelosi only wants members on this committee who will stick to her talking points and stick to her narrative. That's why she's picked the group that she's already picked," Banks said on "Fox News Sunday." He said that "anyone that she asks to be on this committee, from this point moving forward, will be stuck to her -- her narrative, to her point of view. There won't be another side."

The House voted in May to create an independent investigation that would have been evenly split between the parties, but Senate Republicans blocked that approach. Pelosi said the new panel was being created only because a bipartisan commission was no longer an option. 

Currently Cheney sits on the committee along with seven Democrats — ensuring they have a quorum to proceed, whether other Republicans participate or not. 

Pelosi expressed confidence that the committee's work will be seen as bipartisan and credible even with McCarthy's effort to boycott the panel. 

"We have to, again, ignore the antics of those who do not want to find the truth," she said. "We will find the truth. That truth will have the confidence of the American people because it will be done patriotically and not in a partisan way."

Seven people died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.