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For weeks, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) Has been, according to people close to her, “obsessed” with the January 6, 2021, uprising investigation.
She has devoted more than half of her time to gathering evidence, flipping through thousands of pages of testimony, writing scenarios for hearings and developing a strategy on how best to convince her voters and fellow Republicans that the events of this January day were part of a chilling conspiracy watched by former President Donald Trump to undermine democracy.
On Thursday night, in the first of a series of congressional hearings, Cheney recounted the case with an impartial but impulsive presentation of facts, often showing evidence from recorded testimony from the former president’s inner circle that his allegations of voter fraud were not reasonable. She is irritated by the investigation’s biggest findings and sharply criticizes fellow Republicans for the roles they have played – including enabling and continuing to support Trump.
“There will come a time when Donald Trump is gone,” Cheney said, “but your dishonesty will remain.”
THE ATTACK: The siege of the US Capitol on January 6 was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event.
These hearings, which continue Monday, could mark the peak of Cheney’s political career or its end.
The former Republican rising star has already been alienated from party leaders, abandoned by longtime supporters and consistently attacked by Trump and his allies, who support the main rival Cheney will face in August. While most of the nine other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6 have either decided not to run for re-election or, most of all, avoid discussing the former president, Cheney has resigned as deputy chairman of the election commission. the uprising, at the center of its presentation to the electorate. 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 around Donald Trump and the danger he poses are important to every American,” Cheney told supporters during a campaign in Cheyenne, Wyatt, on Saturday. “And I just feel very strong about my responsibility.”
The House of Representatives selection committee held its first session in prime time on June 9, after spending nearly a year investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Video: Mahlia Posey / The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post)
In more than 20 conversations with MPs, political operatives, enemies and friends of the Wyoming Republican, they described her as stubbornly and surgically focused on destroying Trump from the modern conservative movement, which he has largely redefined in recent years, with little introspection. in relation to forces larger than Trump, which facilitated its expulsion from the Wyoming Republican Party earlier this year.
Cheney said that the deadly attack on the US Capitol had crossed the party line for her and that she had a non-partisan obligation to set a record for people who had been “betrayed and deceived” by Trump. Cheney took part in several private meetings with Republican leaders in the days before the attack and was in the House as rebels tried to break down doors, helping other lawmakers put on gas masks as tear gas was used nearby.
Democrats run the elected committee, but turned to Cheney, the daughter of a former Republican vice president who is still being abused, at the first hearing to outline the case against Trump.
“She had a huge lead over the rest of the committee in understanding these events because she knows the players and understands the Republican Party’s internal political culture – it’s a very familiar terrain for her,” said Jamie Ruskin (D-Md.).
6 questions that the commission has been answering since January 6 regarding the attack
Cheney’s Republican counterparts have a hard time understanding her motives, especially given the political price she pays in Wyoming, where Trump is celebrating his biggest victory. Some wonder if he doesn’t want to run for office.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Told others he understood Cheney’s position, but “that’s the only thing she cares about,” according to one adviser. “It doesn’t help anyone.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, of California, told Cheney after her impeachment vote that he would try to protect her if she resigned from Trump. attacks, but she refused, acquaintances said. He described her in private 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 soon after the attack, and has come to see him as responsible for Trump’s resurrection after Jan. 6, according to someone familiar with her thinking.
Cheney explained his motives in personal words during Saturday’s campaign, citing January 6 as the moment he realized that a peaceful transfer of power was no longer a guarantee.
“I looked at my boys in the weeks after January 6; it has become very clear that we may suddenly have to question this, “said Cheney. “And I am absolutely committed to doing everything I can, everything that is required and I am obliged to do to make sure that we are not the last generation in America that can count on a peaceful transition of power. That’s extremely important. “
“Trump is extremely popular in Wyoming”
Days before the first hearing, Cheney stood in the Old West Museum of Cheyenne, surrounded by 19th-century horse-drawn carriages, and told a small crowd of supporters and warned that Trump “cannot be close to this force again.” The crowd of about 70 supporters included mostly traditional Republicans, including several who supported her father’s first campaign more than 40 years ago, as well as some independent voters.
“What we do in Wyoming will be so important,” she said. “I cannot exaggerate how important what we are doing will be, because it will be important from the point of view of our democracy as a whole. It will matter. People will watch Wyoming. “
In the August 16 primary in Wyoming, Cheney faces Harriet Hedgeman, a lawyer and former member of the Republican National Committee whose campaign is led by Trump advisers. The former president attended a large rally in Haydman in late May and said “the people of Wyoming can’t stand” Cheney.
After losing to Georgia, Trump is heading to overthrow Cheney in Wyoming
Cheney’s advisers described the race as difficult, and Trump said the congresswoman was lagging behind in the polls. Cheney retained his huge military basket for the campaign, but last week began what is expected to be a large-scale television advertising campaign that only indirectly refers to “opposition to the perpetrators.”
It failed to run major advertising campaigns, in part for security reasons, and instead gathered dozens of supporters at once and then used its digital media team to distribute video footage of the event to supporters across the state.
Cheney, 56, has long had a complicated relationship with Wyoming. She attended high school in the state, but grew up in the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. Her father, Dick Cheney, went from a junior White House aide to the youngest chief of staff ever for Gerald Ford before returning to Wyoming to win the only seat in the state in 1978.
It forms the political point of view of Liz Cheney the orbit of the father of conservative hawks, especially after he became Secretary of Defense in 1989 and then Vice President of George W. Bush. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, focusing on Middle East issues at the time of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She embraced the popular belief among many neoconservatives that all people long for democratic rule free from their autocratic regimes, which justifies US military action in many parts of the world and leads Trump to mockingly call it “instigator of war.”
During the Obama administration, Cheney began to create his own identity, especially as a sour Fox News guerrilla commentator who belittled the White House. In 2013, she tried to challenge Senator Mike Enzy (R-Wyo.), But withdrew from the race amid an angry reaction. She then ran for her father’s former seat in the House in 2016 and won, saying her star power would help the state.
Tim Stubson, a former state official who lost to Cheney in 2016 but now supports her, said he recalled Cheney saying, “I have a national voice. I have a national presence. I can use that for the benefit of the state of Wyoming.
“It was her idea,” Stubson said. “And that’s exactly what she did.”
Since Cheney is running for office for the first time, Trump has become the party’s presidential candidate. Stubson recalls that she carefully accepted most of Trump’s conservative policies, but not his scandalous behavior – later earning praise from members of the Trump family and senior advisers during a fundraiser in the resort town of Jackson, Wyoming 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 Wyoming really thinks of Liz Cheney
Meanwhile, the Wyoming Republican Party has slowly been taken over by conservatives, who identify more as Trump supporters than Republicans. The state party is now led by Frank Etern, a member of the Guardians of the Oath, who stood on the Western Front of the Capitol during the uprising, with a walkie-talkie in hand. Cheney has focused heavily on investigating his role, advisers say.
“This [takeover] it was planned for several years, very organized and very dedicated, “said Joe McGinley, former Natrona …
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