WASHINGTON – When pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 demanding lawmakers overturn presidential election results, Rep. Liz Cheney’s first thought when she was in the House was that the attack it was made of his own party.
As Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and other lawmakers rushed to evacuate the House, Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and a close ally of President Donald J. Trump, tried to help her move. for sure. She pulled her hand away.
“Get away from me,” Mrs. Cheney told him, adding that she blamed him for what was happening.
Hours later, as he hid in a safe place with other lawmakers while the Capitol was still under siege, he surprised a Democratic congressman who told him it was crucial that lawmakers return quickly to the House of Commons to certify the results of the the elections.
“Yes,” she replied. “And dismiss the son of a bitch,” he added, referring to Mr. Trump.
Mrs. Cheney’s reaction on January 6 marked the culmination of a remarkable arc for the daughter of a prominent conservative family, from one of her party’s most powerful leaders to one of her most vocal critics. and a vilified enemy of his de facto party. leader.
She has been reluctant to continue blaming Mr. Trump for provoking the attack and her Republican colleagues for following her example by spreading the lie of a stolen election. This position has left her sidelined by her party, with her colleagues expelling her from her leadership position and trying to purge her from the House by pushing a MAGA-style main rival at home in Wyoming.
Now, from her position as vice chair of the committee investigating the attack, Ms. Cheney is leading the task of holding Mr. Trump accountable for his efforts to cancel the election. On Thursday night, he took the lead in the first of a series of six hearings at this month’s peak audience to set out the panel’s findings, with a prominent role questioning witnesses and exposing the riot bets.
“We face a threat we have never faced before: a former president trying to overthrow our constitutional republic,” Ms. Cheney said last month when she received the Library Foundation’s Profile In Courage Award. John F. Kennedy.
“Right now we all need to muster the courage to oppose,” he continued. “The question for each of us is at this time of trial, will we do our duty? Will we defend our Constitution? Will we be for the truth? Will we put the duty of our oath above partisan politics? Or will we look away from danger? will we ignore the threat, accept the lies and enable the liar?
On Thursday, Ms. Cheney spent much of the day polishing her opening statements, tapping her laptop in her suite in the Cannon House office building, one floor above the spacious living room. audience covered with chandeliers where he had to speak before a national event. -television audience. The legislator wrote her own speech, the aides said, in consultation with a small internal circle of advisers in her office and panel lawyers.
Her husband, Philip Perry, and one of her four children were to attend the nightly hearing, but former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, stayed at their suburban Virginia home. Ms. Cheney, however, talks to her father every day, over the phone or in person, and discussed her remarks with him in the hours leading up to Thursday’s hearing.
Ms. Cheney, who had been one of the most powerful Republicans in the House, was fired from her leadership position last year for strongly and repeatedly condemning Mr. Cheney’s false election claims. Trump and blame him for the riots.
His blunt remarks on his party’s complicity in the riots were previously reported in the book “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year” by Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, and later confirmed by a Congress aide informed of the exchange. Mrs. Cheney’s earthly exhortation to dismiss Mr. Trump was reported in the book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, two journalists from The New York Times.
Behind the scenes, Ms. Cheney is known to be one of the most committed and aggressive questions on the January 6 panel. It was she who pushed for a bipartisan team of former intelligence analysts and law enforcement specialists on committee staff.
Ms. Cheney is one of two Republicans on the committee, along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has also openly condemned Mr. Trump. Both were selected by California Democrat spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi after Republicans boycotted the committee in protest of its decision to ban two of its members from participating.
At almost every moment since the riot, Mr. Trump and Republican House leaders have tried to oust her from the party, including supporting her main rival, Harriet Hageman, backed by Trump. There are few Republicans that the former president is more determined to defeat than the Wyoming House general, and polls show Ms. Cheney is facing a tough battle to keep her seat in a ruby red state that it still favors the former president.
“Nancy Pelosi loves her hand-picked rye,” wrote Ms. Hageman on Twitter, sharing a news article about Ms. Cheney to the committee on January 6th. “Wyoming? Not so much.”
The congresswoman is in political danger because, unlike some Republicans who have found themselves in Mr. Trump’s spotlight, she has not tried to repair her relationship with Mr. Trump or ignored his criticism.
Instead, by taking a leadership role in the Jan. 6 panel, Ms. Cheney has elevated herself as perhaps Mr. Cheney’s main critic. Trump in the current Republican Party. He has said that he considers the commission to be the most important of his political career and that he often uses language borrowed from the penal code, presented with a characteristic tone of forcefulness, to make it clear that he believes he is facing criminal exposure.
“What Donald Trump did,” Ms. Cheney said, “was really mobilized and motivated and summoned the mob. And the lie about the election was the one that ignited the flame.”
Apparently embracing political martyrdom, Ms. Cheney had been invited to speculate that she might not seek re-election, until last month when she applied to do so shortly before the deadline.
His anti-Trump stance has fueled speculation that if he wins or loses this summer in Wyoming, he will run a long-running campaign against the former president if he wants to regain the presidency.
In a video she posted while running for re-election last month, Ms. Cheney used the kind of high-pitched language she has often resorted to since breaking up with her party last year, invoking the distinctive meaning of the western honor of his state, and perhaps by preview. what it can offer voters in 2024.
“In Wyoming, we know what it means to ride for the brand,” Ms. Cheney said. “We live in the greatest nation God has ever created, and our mark is the Constitution of the United States.”
Ms. Cheney has made little secret of the fact that she considers her work on the January 6 panel historic, and the political price she has paid for it.
“While listening to some of my colleagues and others who think that the way to respond to this research is with politics and partisanship, these people are not acting in a healthy way for the country,” he said in an interview. with The Dispatch earlier this week. “And if we really want to understand why January 6 is a line that can never be crossed again, then we really need to put politics and partisanship aside and say what happened.”
On Thursday, she was accompanied all day by one of Mr.’s old friends. Cheney, David Hume Kennerly, the famous photographer who forged a relationship with the future vice president when they both served in the White House of President Gerald Ford, Mr. Cheney as Chief of Staff and Mr. Kennerly as official photographer.
Mr. Kennerly, who remains close to the family, has appeared, camera in hand, on other momentous days for Mrs. Cheney, including last year when she was removed from her leadership position by her fellow Republicans.