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For weeks, MP Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Has been, in the words of her relatives, “obsessed” with investigating the January 6, 2021 uprising.
He has spent more than half of his working hours collecting evidence, flipping through thousands of pages of testimony, writing scripts for hearings, and developing strategies on how best to convince his constituents and fellow Republicans that events ‘that January they were part of a horrific conspiracy overseen by former President Donald Trump to undermine democracy.
On Thursday night, in the first of a series of hearings in Congress, Cheney narrated the case with a dispassionate but propulsive presentation of the facts, often showing evidence of videotaped depositions from the former president’s inner circle admitting that the his allegations of electoral fraud had no merit. He mocked the most important findings of the investigation and harshly criticized his fellow Republicans for the roles they played, including allowing and continuing to support Trump.
“There will come a time when Donald Trump will disappear,” Cheney said, “but your disgrace will continue.”
THE ATTACK: The siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.
These hearings, which continue Monday, could mark the end of Cheney’s political career or the end of it.
The former rising GOP star has already been alienated by party leaders, abandoned by longtime supporters and constantly attacked by Trump and his allies, who support a major rival Cheney will face in August. While most of the other nine Republicans who voted for Trump’s ouster after Jan. 6 have decided not to run for re-election or have mostly avoided talking about the former president, Cheney has done just that. her role as vice chair of the select committee investigating the insurrection is central to the insurrection. his argument to voters. She is trying to convince them that she is on the right side of history, and that her approach to conservatism without Trump is the right one.
“These issues around what happened on January 6 and about Donald Trump and the danger they pose are important to all Americans,” Cheney told his supporters at a campaign event in Cheyenne. Wyo., Saturday. “And I just feel very strongly about my responsibility.”
The select committee of the House held its first session at prime time on June 9 after spending almost a year investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. (Video: Mahlia Posey / The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post)
In more than 20 conversations with lawmakers, politicians, enemies, and friends of the Wyoming Republican, she is uniformly described as stubborn and surgically focused on extinguishing Trump from the modern conservative movement he has largely redefined in recent years with little introspection. as for the larger Trump forces that facilitated his expulsion from the Republican Party of Wyoming earlier this year.
Cheney has said the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol crossed the party line for her and that she has a nonpartisan duty to make things clear to people who were “betrayed and lied to” by Trump. Cheney attended several private meetings with GOP leaders in the days leading up to the attack and was in the House as insurgents tried to break down doors, helping other lawmakers put on gas masks because tear gas had been deployed. near.
Democrats lead the select committee, but they were given to Cheney, the daughter of a former Republican vice president who is still insulted, at the opening hearing to methodically expose the case against Trump.
“She has had a great advantage over the rest of the committee in understanding these events, because she knows the players and understands the internal political culture of the GOP; this is a field well known to her,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D- Md). .) dit.
6 questions that the January 6 committee wants to answer about the attack
Cheney’s Republican colleagues have struggled to understand his motives, especially given the political price he’s paying in Wyoming, where Trump celebrated his biggest margins of victory. Some wonder if he wants to run for office.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Has told others he understands Cheney’s position, but “he’s the only one who cares,” according to an adviser. “That doesn’t help anyone.”
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Told Cheney after his impeachment vote that he would try to protect her if he left Trump. attacks, but she declined, people familiar with the matter said. He described her privately as “obsessed” with Trump and the destruction of his political power, they said. Cheney has repeatedly criticized McCarthy for going to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump shortly after the attack and has come to see him responsible for Trump’s resurrection after Jan. 6, according to a person known to his thinking.
Cheney explained his motives in personal terms at Saturday’s campaign event, noting January 6 as the time when he realized that the peaceful transfer of power was no longer a guarantee.
“I looked at my boys in the weeks after January 6; it was very clear that maybe we should question it all of a sudden, “Cheney said. “And I am absolutely committed to doing everything I can, everything I am asked to do, and I am compelled to do so to make sure that we are not the last generation in America to have a peaceful transition of power. very important”.
“Trump is very popular in Wyoming”
Days before the opening hearing, Cheney stayed at the Cheyenne Old West Museum, surrounded by 19th-century horse-drawn carriages, and told a small crowd of supporters and warned that Trump “can’t to be close to that power again. ” The crowd of about 70 supporters mostly included traditional Republicans, including some who supported his father’s first campaign more than 40 years ago, as well as some independent-leaning voters.
“What we do in Wyoming will be very important,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. It will be important. People will see Wyoming. “
In the August 16 Wyoming primary, Cheney faces Harriet Hageman, a lawyer and former member of the Republican National Committee whose campaign is led by Trump advisers. The former president attended a large rally for Hageman in late May and has stated that “the people of Wyoming can’t stand” Cheney.
Following the loss of Georgia, Trump is looking to bring down Cheney in Wyoming
Cheney’s advisers describe the race as difficult, and Trump has said the congresswoman is lagging behind in the polls. Cheney has retained his big campaign war chest, but last week began what is expected to be a massive television advertising campaign that only indirectly refers to “resisting the bullies.”
He has been unable to hold large publicity campaign events, in part due to security issues, but is gathering dozens of followers at once and then using his digital media team to launch video snippets of the event to fans around the world. state.
Cheney, 56, has had a complicated relationship with Wyoming for some time. He attended high school in the state, but grew up mostly in the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. His father, Dick Cheney, went from being a junior assistant to the White House to being the youngest presidential chief of staff in history, for Gerald Ford, before returning to Wyoming and winning the only seat in the White House. the state in 1978.
Liz Cheney’s political point of view was formed in her the orbit of the father of the Conservative Falcons, especially once he became Secretary of Defense in 1989 and then Vice President of George W. Bush. She served as Deputy Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs at a time when wars were raging in Afghanistan and Iraq. He accepted the popular belief among many neoconservatives that all people longed for democratic governance freed from their autocratic regimes, justifying U.S. military action in many parts of the world, and having Trump mockingly label it a “war.”
During the years of the Obama administration, Cheney began to carve out his own identity, especially as an acid-tongue partisan commentator on Fox News who despised the White House. In 2013, he tried to challenge Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), But withdrew from the race amid a furious reaction. He then opted for the former seat of his father’s House in 2016 and won, saying his star power would help the state.
Tim Stubson, a former state representative who lost to Cheney in 2016 but is now a supporter, said he remembers Cheney saying, “I have a national voice. I have a national presence. I can use it for the benefit of the state of Wyoming “.
“That was his argument,” Stubson said. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
When Cheney first ran for office, Trump became the party’s presidential candidate. Stubson recalls that he carefully embraced most of Trump’s conservative policies, but not his outrageous behavior, later earning the praise of Trump family members and top advisers at a fundraiser in the tourist city of Wyoming in Jackson in 2019.
Trump won the state by 46 percentage points in 2016, slightly better than Mitt Romney in 2012, and then by 43 percentage points in 2020.
What does Wyoming really think of Liz Cheney
During this time, the Wyoming Republican Party has been slowly taken over by conservatives who identify more as supporters of Trump than as Republicans. The state party is now led by Frank Eathorne, a member of the Oath Keepers who stood on the west front of the Capitol during the uprising, walkie-talkie in hand. Cheney has focused heavily on investigating his role, advisers say.
“It simply came to our notice then [takeover] it was planned for several years, very organized and very dedicated, “said Joe McGinley, a former Natrona …