Liz Cheney said Sunday that Donald Trump’s tweet in the midst of the Capitol storming last month could have been the former president’s attempt to intentionally ‘provoke violence’.
‘There’s a massive criminal investigation underway. There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on January 6th and in the days before,’ Representative Cheney told Chris Wallace on ‘Fox News Sunday.’ ‘People will want to know exactly what the president was doing.’
‘They want to know, for example, whether the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence,’ she continued.
Cheney was the highest ranking House Republican to vote for Trump’s impeachment last month after Democrats levied an article against him for ‘incitement of insurrection,’ claiming his charged rhetoric was to blame for the attack.
On January 6, as pro-Trump rioters were breaching the Capitol, the former president tweeted: ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.’
He added: ‘USA demands the truth!’
Since then, Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended and that tweet was deleted.
The post, however, could come back to haunt the former president as it could be used in the impeachment trial kicking off in the Senate this week.
Liz Cheney suggested Sunday that Donald Trump’s tweet in the midst of the Capitol storming last month could have been the former president’s attempt to intentionally ‘provoke violence’
As pro-Trump rioters were storming the Capitol on January 6, the then-president tweeted that Vice President Mike Pence didn’t have the ‘courage’ to overturn the results and said ‘USA demands the truth!’
Cheney told ‘Fox News Sunday’ that investigators and Americans ‘want to know… whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence’
Following her vote to impeach Trump, Cheney has faced a litany of fallout, including calls for her to be ousted from her post as GOP Conference chairwoman and a formal censuring from the Wyoming GOP.
The congresswoman, however, is not stepping down, suggesting if she were a senator she would go forward with voting to convict Trump.
‘If I were in the Senate, I would listen to the testimony. I would listen to the evidence. If you’re a senator you have a responsibility to be a juror and I think that’s very important,’ Cheney told Wallace.
‘But I obviously believe and did then that what we already know is enough for his impeachment,’ she continued. ‘What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country, and this is not something that we can simply look past or pretend didn’t happen or try to move on. We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.’
It is very unlikely Trump will be convicted in the second impeachment trial against him as at least 17 Republicans would have to vote along with Democrats to reach the two-thirds needed.
The Wyoming Republican also told Fox on Sunday morning that she will not step down as her state’s at-large representative after the state’s GOP voted to formally censure her following her impeachment ‘yea’ vote.
Cheney snubbed Trump in an interview with Fox News, claiming the party should not embrace the former president or anything spouted by Trump ultra-loyalist Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
‘We have to make sure that we are able to convey to the American voters, we are the party of responsibility, we are the party of truth, that we actually can be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces like COVID and that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward,’ Cheney said.
‘We should not be embracing the former president,’ she added in her interview on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace.
While stepping up her attacks on Trump – whom she voted to impeach last month – Cheney also launched attacks against fellow GOP Representative Greene.
‘With respect to Congressman Greene, we’ve all been very clear,’ Cheney said after the House voted to remove the Georgia representative from both her committee assignments on Thursday for previously pushing QAnon conspiracies.
‘The things that she has said don’t have any place in our public discourse and we as a Republican conference should deal with that issue,’ Cheney said in defending Republicans’ call for Democrats to allow them to settle the issue within their conference. ‘We should have dealt with it. That’s not something the Democrats should be addressing on the floor of the House, we should have dealt with that.’
‘We are the party of Lincoln,’ Cheney continued. ‘We are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust-deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That’s not who we are.’
The Wyoming Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to censure Cheney for voting to impeach Trump for ‘incitement of insurrection’ in the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
Only eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that didn’t proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the U.S. House didn’t offer Trump ‘formal hearing or due process.’
‘We need to honor President Trump. All President Trump did was call for a peaceful assembly and protest for a fair and audited election,’ said Darin Smith, a Cheyenne attorney who lost to Cheney in the Republican U.S. House primary in 2016. ‘The Republican Party needs to put her on notice.’
The Wyoming Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to censure their at-large Representative Cheney for voting to impeach Trump, but the GOP Conference chairwoman said she will not step down
In addition to the vote, the party also announced that it was going to ‘withhold any future political funding’ from Cheney, CNN reports.
Added Joey Correnti, GOP chairman in Carbon County where the censure vote was held: ‘Does the voice of the people matter and if it does, does it only matter at the ballot box?’
In addition to the vote, the party also announced that it was going to ‘withhold any future political funding’ from Cheney, CNN reports.
The motion also called for Cheney to repay donations from the state GOP and any county Republican parties that donated to her most recent campaign.
Cheney in a statement after the vote said she remained honored to represent Wyoming and will always fight for issues that matter most to the state.
‘Foremost among these is the defense of our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution,’ Cheney said.
Republican officials said they invited Cheney but she didn’t attend. An empty chair labeled ‘Representative Cheney’ sat at the front of the meeting room
Republican officials said they invited Cheney but she didn’t attend. An empty chair labeled ‘Representative Cheney’ sat at the front of the meeting room.
The censure vote was the latest blowback for Cheney for joining nine Republican representatives and all Democrats in the U.S. House in the January 13 impeachment vote. Just three months after winning a third term with almost 70%, Cheney already faces at least two Republican primary opponents in 2022.
They include Republican state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, a gun-rights activist from Cheyenne, who was at the meeting but not among those who speak. Smith also has said he is deliberating whether to run for Congress again.
Cheney, seen going through security at the House, said in a statement after the vote that she remained honored to represent Wyoming and will always fight for issues that matter to her state
On January 28, Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida, led a rally against Cheney in front of the Wyoming Capitol. About 1,000 people took part
On January 28, Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida, led a rally against Cheney in front of the Wyoming Capitol. About 1,000 people took part, many of them carrying signs calling for Cheney’s impeachment though several were supportive.
Cheney will remain as the third-ranking member of the House GOP leadership, however, after a 145-61 vote by House Republicans on Wednesday to keep her as conference committee chair.
Trump faces trial in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday over allegedly inciting insurrection when a mob of supporters stormed into and rampaged through the Capitol after a nearby rally led by Trump and close allies.
Liz Cheney is up for re-election in 2022, and is already facing the prospect of a challenge in a primary as she’s endured intra-party criticism for her support of impeachment
Censure opponents mainly came from Casper, Wyoming´s second-largest city, and the Jackson Hole area near Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.
‘Let´s resist this infusion of left-wing cancel culture to try to censure and get rid of anybody we disagree with,’ said Alexander Muromcew with the Teton County GOP.
Momentum for censure had been growing for weeks as local Republicans in around a dozen of Wyoming’s 23 counties passed their own resolutions criticizing her impeachment vote.