Posts tagged with "Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming)"

Above, U.S. Representatives Zoe Lofgren, at left, and Liz Cheney. (Photo source: Agence France-Presse)

Top January 6 committee members propose reforms to 1887 Electoral Count Act

September 21, 2022

Two senior members of the House’s January 6 select committee have introduced a bipartisan bill to reform the counting of presidential electoral votes to prevent another riot at the Capitol over disputed results, reports ABC News.

The Presidential Election Reform Act—from Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), and Zoe Lofgren (D-California)—targets some of the perceived nuances in 135-year-old Electoral Count Act that former President Donald Trump and his supporters attempted to exploit in order to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

“Our proposal is intended to preserve the rule of law for all future presidential elections by ensuring that self-interested politicians cannot steal from the people the guarantee that our government derives its power from the consent of the governed,” Cheney and Lofgren wrote in a joint Wall Street Journal column last week.

The full House could vote on the proposal as early as Wednesday.

The revisions would reaffirm the vice president’s ceremonial role over the count, after then-Vice President Mike Pence was pressured by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, according to the legislative text and summary of the proposal obtained by ABC News.

The bill would make it more difficult for lawmakers to raise objections to electors from each state, by requiring at least one-third of the members from each chamber to support an objection, rather than one House member and a single senator.

It also would clarify ambiguities in the Electoral College process by requiring governors to transmit state results to Congress and prohibiting election officials from refusing to certify their state’s election results. In either case, the law would allow a presidential candidate to go to court to force compliance with the law.

The proposal would prevent state legislators from undoing the election results in their states—and require that elections be carried out under the state rules on the books on Election Day.

“The Constitution assigns an important duty to state legislatures, to determine the manner in which the states appoint their electors. But this shouldn’t be misread to allow state legislators to change the election rules retroactively to alter the outcome,” Cheney and Lofgren wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

In July, a bipartisan group of senators including Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), and Susan Collins (R-Maine), proposed their own reforms to the Electoral Count Act.

While their proposal also affirms the vice president’s limited role in proceedings, it sets a different threshold requirement for electoral challenges, among other differences.

Research contact: @abcnews

Above, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming). (Art source: Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway for The Daily Beast)

Liz Cheney says new political group will target Trump allies

August 23, 2022

Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) said on Sunday, August 21, that her political focus after leaving Congress would go beyond challenging former President Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party to include opposing candidates who promote Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, reports The Wall Street Journal.

“I’m going to be very focused on working to ensure that we do everything we can not to elect election deniers,” Cheney said on ABC. “We’ve got election deniers that have been nominated for really important positions all across the country. And I’m going to work against those people. I’m going to work to support their opponents.”

Cheney, the most prominent of the House Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump on a charge of inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, lost her GOP primary election last week.

Hours after her loss, she filed with the Federal Election Commission to transfer the remaining cash from her federal campaign account to a new political-action committee. She had more than $7 million in cash on hand at the end of July, according to FEC filings.

Cheney’s stature as a leading critic of Trump and her presumed ability to raise money have generated broad interest in her next steps in politics. If she took action this year, her comments could translate into support for Democratic candidates in some races. In states including Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona, Republican nominees running for Congress, as well as for statewide offices such as secretary of state and governor, have promoted the idea that the 2020 election was stolen and that President Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

Cheney, in the interview on Sunday, cited as potential targets Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, as well as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

, all of whom are Republicans with presidential ambitions. Of the two senators, she said that both “took steps that fundamentally threatened the constitutional order and structure in the aftermath of the last election. So, in my view, they both have made themselves unfit for future office.’’

The two senators objected in writing to certifying the results of the 2020 presidential contest. A photograph of Hawley with a raised fist earlier that day in solidarity with the Trump supporters surrounding the Capitol has become an iconographic image of January 6.

A spokesperson for Cruz said, “Senator Cruz doesn’t need or want soon-to-be-former Rep. Liz Cheney’s endorsement, and he wishes her the best of luck in the 2024 Democrat presidential primary.” A spokesman for Hawley said, “We wish her the best.” Representatives for Mr. DeSantis didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Cheney didn’t offer details about the chance that she would run for the presidency in 2024 or, if she did run, whether it would be as a Republican or an Independent. “Any decision that I make about doing something that significant and that serious would be with the intention of winning and because I think I would be the best candidate,” she said.

Research contact: @WSJ

Above, Dick Cheney calls Trump 'a threat to our Republic.' (Photo source: Twitter)

Dick Cheney calls Trump a ‘coward’ in campaign ad for his daughter

August 8, 2022

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in a campaign ad for his elder daughter, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming)—who serves as Vice Chair of the January 6 Committee—said former president Donald Trump is a “coward” and the greatest threat to the nation in its 246-year history, reports The Washington Post.

“He is a coward,” Cheney says in the ad, which was released on Thursday, August 4. “A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election, and he lost big. I know it, he knows it, and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”

Liz Cheney faces a tough primary on August 16 for Wyoming’s sole congressional seat, with Trump-backed Harriet Hageman favored to win.

Trump, Cheney said, “tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him.”

The former president has repeatedly spread false claims of voter fraud and a rigged election, the Post reports. The House impeached him on a charge of inciting an insurrection for the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters intent on stopping the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win.

“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney says.

In the ad, the former vice president wears a white cowboy hat and speaks directly to the camera. He says he and his wife, Lynne Cheney, are proud of Liz Cheney for “standing up for the truth, doing what is right, honoring her oath to the Constitution when so many in our own party are too scared to do so.”

Liz Cheney was ousted from her spot as the House’s No. 3 Republican after she voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection.

“Liz is fearless. She never backs down from a fight,” her father says in the ad. “There is nothing more important she will ever do than lead the effort to make sure Donald Trump is never near the Oval Office again. And she will succeed.”

Research contact: @washingtonpost

Above, former Vice President Mike Pence. (Photo source: Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson for The Texas Tribune

At third hearing, January 6 committee focuses on Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence

June 17, 2022

The third hearing by the House select committee investigating the January. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol focused in on a wide-ranging pressure campaign that then-President Donald Trump put on his own vice president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the transfer of power that day, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The hearing on Thursday, June 16, was led by Representative Pete Aguilar (D-California), according to committee aides; while John Wood, a senior investigator for the committee, was involved in questioning witnesses.

The committee in its second hearing on Monday reviewed evidence that Trump was told repeatedly by White House insiders, including his own attorney general, William Barr, that his claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud weren’t true. Trump, who refused to acknowledge the lack of evidence of election fraud, continued to assert that the election had been stolen. The committee says those claims helped inspire the mob on January 6 to storm the Capitol.

During the second public hearing, former Attorney General William Barr said the voter fraud claims were “disturbing allegations.” Witnesses testified on former President Donald Trump’s efforts to cast doubt on the election, which the committee alleges triggered the attack on the Capitol.

Trump has denied wrongdoing related to the riot and called the committee’s probe a sham.

On Thursday, the committee detailed how Trump, over the course of several weeks leading up to January 6, pushed Pence—who as vice president presided over the counting of Electoral College votes—to refuse to accept votes for Joe Biden from a handful of battleground states, throwing the election into chaos. The former president was following a playbook sketched out by lawyer John Eastman in a memo entitled “January 6 scenario.”

The scheme detailed by Eastman was based in part on the existence of fake slates of electors from seven battleground states—including Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia—signed by Trump backers. The hearing outlined evidence from the committee’s investigation into efforts to submit those slates, according to committee aides.

Under Eastman’s plan, Pence would refuse to count ballots in states that had multiple slates of electors. That would leave Trump with a majority of votes, and “Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected,” according to the memo.

After expected objections from Democrats, Pence would send the matter to the House, where each state would have one vote. Since Republicans at the time controlled the delegations of 26 states, “President Trump is re-elected,” Eastman wrote.

Another version of the plan involved sending the electoral votes back to state legislatures, which would determine which electoral slates to send to Congress. More than 100 Republican House members and several Republican senators challenged votes from states such as Pennsylvania—challenges the House and Senate ultimately rejected.

Pence consulted with several experts about Eastman’s plan, including former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, who hagreed to appear at the committee’s hearing Thursday.

In a letter distributed to members of Congress on January6, Pence wrote that, while some thought he could accept or reject electoral votes unilaterally, he didn’t think he had the “authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress.”

In a speech to the pro-Trump crowd at the Ellipse near the White House on January. 6, Eastman said, “All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1:00 he let the legislators of the [states] look into this so we get to the bottom of it.”

“All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president,” Trump said in his January 6 speech to the crowd, which followed Eastman’s.

After Trump’s speech, a large crowd started moving toward the Capitol. Trump later tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Members of the mob that broke into the Capitol began chanting “hang Mike Pence”—and Trump was said to have privately agreed that they “might be right.”

Indeed, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), vice chairwoman of the select committee, in her opening statement at the panel’s first hearing said that Trump, aware of the chants, responded: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.”

At the Thursday hearing, the committee planned to feature video evidence showing the danger Mr. Pence faced on January 6, committee aides said.

Research contact: @WSJ

Above, Ivanka Trump and former President Donald Trump. (Photo source: Express Co. UK)

Trump slams Ivanka and denies saying Pence ‘deserves’ to hang in ‘Truth Social’ meltdown

June 13, 2022

After a video clip displayed by the January 6 House Committee plainly showed Ivanka Trump testifying that she didn’t believe her dad’s wild theory that the 2020 election was stolen—but instead that she accepted former Attorney General Bill Barr’s assurance that there had been no fraud connected with the 2020 election—her father, former President Donald Trump returned the favor by attacking her credibility as a witness, reports The Daily Beast.

Specifically, Ivanka told the congressional panel that she had changed her mind about whether or not the election was rigged after Barr, Trump’s AG for most of 2020, told her that it wasn’t. “I respect Attorney General Barr,” Ivanka said on the video of her testimony shown by the committee during a prime time special on Thursday night, June 9, “So I accepted what he was saying.

In immediate reaction, the following morning, Trump did not hesitate to throw his supposed favorite child under the bus: The former president rushed to tell his followers that they should pay no mind to what his daughter had said. “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results,” the former president wrote. “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).”

In a flurry of missives sent via his Truth Social channel early on Friday, June 10, Trump also denied having agreed with rioters’ chants to hang Mike Pence and—just for good measure—reaffirmed his baseless claim that the election was stolen.

And it wasn’t just Ivanka’s testimony that left Trump all hot and bothered. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) revealed that former Trump aides said the president had reacted to mob chants to hang his vice president with shocking approval, including with the ice-cold phrase: “Mike Pence deserves it.” Again, Trump contradicted the testimony with all-caps fury. “I NEVER said, or even thought of saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” he wrote. “This is either a made up story by somebody looking to become a star, or FAKE NEWS!”

“The so-called ‘Rush on the Capitol’ was not caused by me,” Trump continued, “It was caused by a Rigged and Stolen Election!” Returning to another familiar refrain, the former commander-in-chief also appeared to sum up his feelings toward the bipartisan House select committee generally as: “A one sided, totally partisan, POLITICAL WITH HUNT!”

He earlier used the platform to claim that the panel “refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place on a massive scale,” before adding: “Our Country is in such trouble!”

At the hearing Thursday, committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) directly blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol after the 2020 election. “He spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the constitution to march down the capital and subvert American democracy,” Thompson said.

Representative Cheney further pointed to Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen as the reason the attack took place. “Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president,” Cheney said in her opening statement. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack.”

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia has said that he 'loves' giving tours of the Capitol building. . (Photo sources: iStock/Gov.org for Newsweek)

January 6 panel presses GOP lawmaker about Capitol tour

May 23, 2022

On May 19, the leaders of the House special committee investigating the January. 6 attack on the Capitol asked a Republican congressman to submit to questioning about a tour of the complex that he allegedly gave one day before the riot—saying they were looking into whether rioters had conducted reconnaissance of the building before the rampage, reports The New York Times.

In a Thursday letter to Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia), the top two members of the panel said investigators had obtained evidence that the Georgia Republican had led a tour through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021, when it was closed to visitors because of pandemic restrictions. Loudermilk has denied having led any “reconnaissance” tour.

“Public reporting and witness accounts indicate some individuals and groups engaged in efforts to gather information about the layout of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, in advance of January 6, 2021,” said a letter to Loudermilk from Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman.

They did not directly allege that any person escorted by Loudermilk later attacked the Capitol. But they suggested that they had obtained evidence that he had led visitors around the complex, writing that their review of evidence “directly contradicts” Republicans’ denials that closed-circuit security camera footage showed no such tours had taken place.

In a statement, Loudermilk conceded that he had brought constituents into parts of the Capitol complex the day before the riot, but he said the visit had been innocuous.

“A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House office buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour.’ The family never entered the Capitol building,” Loudermilk wrote in a joint statement with Representative Rodney Davis of Illinois, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, adding: “No place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th, the family did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th, and no one in that family has been investigated or charged in connection to January 6th.”

The statement did not say whether Loudermilk would agree to meet with the panel to discuss the matter.

Research contact: @nytimes

Above, Republican Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinziger. (Photo source: RSBN)

Cheney, Kinzinger call out Trump over Pence comments

February 1, 2022

Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) called out former President Donald Trump after he suggested that former Vice President Mike Pence should have overturned the results of the 2020 presidential election, reports The Hill.

Cheney and Kinzinger—who are the only two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol—characterized the ex-president’s comments as un-American.

Cheney outlined a series of Trump’s recent statements in a tweet on Monday, January 31— including his admission that “he was attempting to overturn the election”— before writing, “He’d do it all again if given the chance.”

The Wyoming Republican, who is facing a Trump-backed primary challenger, also noted that Trump previously said he would consider pardoning individuals charged in connection to the January 6 riot if he runs for president again and wins another term in the White House.

Kinzinger on Sunday said Trump’s statement earlier that day was “an admission” and “massively un-American.” He then offered an ultimatum to GOP leaders, calling on them to “pick a side” between Trump or the Constitution.

“There is no middle on defending our nation anymore,” he added in a tweet.

Trump in a statement on Sunday pointed to a congressional effort to reform the Electoral College Act as proof that Pence “did have the right to change the outcome” of the 2020 presidential election.

The former president said Pence “unfortunately” did not “exercise that power,” adding “he could have overturned the Election!”

Pence’s role in overseeing the certification of the Electoral College vote was, as it is for all vice presidents, largely ceremonial. He presided over a joint session of Congress on January 6 where he recognized GOP senators and House members who objected to the results to the voting count in specific states. That set up votes by the House and Senate to consider the objections.

Trump has long argued falsely that Pence had more power over the process and the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 did so thinking they could end the

The former president’s statement comes as the congressional effort to reform the Electoral College Act is picking up momentum, with some lawmakers seeing changes to the archaic law as a compromise between both parties on election reform; which Democrats have been pushing for on the federal level in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

The Electoral College Act was enacted in 1887 and outlines how the Electoral College results are counted. A bipartisan group of senators met last week to discuss changes to the statute.

Research contact: @thehill

Above, the Chairman of the House select committee, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) addresses the press. (Photo source: Roll Call)

In pushback to Trump, Supreme Court allows release of hundreds of January 6 documents

January 21, 2022

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, January 19, refused a request from former President Donald Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the January 6 attack on the Capitol—effectively rejecting Trump’s claim of executive privilege and clearing the way for the House committee investigating the riot to start receiving the documents hours later, reports The New York Times.

The court, with only Justice Clarence Thomas noting a dissent, let stand an appeals court ruling that Trump’s desire to maintain the confidentiality of internal White House communications was outweighed by the need for a full accounting of the attack and the disruption of the certification of the 2020 electoral count.

In an unsigned order, the majority wrote that Mr. Trump’s request for a stay while the case moved forward presented weighty issues, including “whether and in what circumstances a former president may obtain a court order preventing disclosure of privileged records from his tenure in office, in the face of a determination by the incumbent president to waive the privilege.”

But an appeals court’s ruling against Trump did not turn on those questions, the order said. “Because the court of appeals concluded that President Trump’s claims would have failed even if he were the incumbent, his status as a former president necessarily made no difference to the court’s decision,” the order said.

Within hours of the decision, the National Archives began turning over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee.v A Justice Department spokesperson said on Wednesday evening that the documents had been delivered to the committee. But a spokesperson for the panel said on Thursday morning that the committee had received only some of the documents and expected the rest to be delivered as quickly as the archives could produce them.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman, called the decision “a victory for the rule of law and American democracy.”

“Our work goes forward to uncover all the facts about the violence of January 6 and its causes,” they said.

Research contact: @nytimes

Above, Representative Adam Kinzinger. (Photo source: Adam Kinzinger/Twittet)