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In an interview with CNN’s Casey Hunt, Cheney — the GOP vice chairman of the House Select Committee investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 riot — said Trump was “guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty since every president in our nation’s history,” and named a judge they said may have committed crimes. She said the House committee “will continue to monitor the facts. I think the Justice Department will do that. But they have to make decisions about prosecution.”
“Understanding what it means, if the facts and the evidence are there and they decide not to prosecute – how then can we call ourselves a nation of laws? I think it’s a very serious, serious balancing act,” Cheney said.
“The question for us is, are we a nation of law? A country where no one is above the law? And what do the facts and the evidence show?” Cheney said.
She sidestepped questions about whether Trump’s Justice Department pursuit of President Joe Biden would only increase his strength with the GOP base ahead of the 2024 presidential bid, which Trump has repeatedly teased.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to think about it that way,” said Cheney, who faces a Trump-backed challenger in the primary later this month.
“I think he is guilty of the most serious default of any president in the history of our nation,” Cheney said of Trump. “You had a federal judge in California say it was more likely that he and John Eastman committed two crimes.”
The House committee is preparing to release its final report before the midterm elections in November.
“He tried to steal the last election, using lies and violence to hang on to power after voters rejected him,” says the former vice president on the ground.
“He’s a coward. 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,” added Dick Cheney.
Liz Cheney has not said whether her father has urged her to run for president in 2024.
“Look, Dick Cheney is a big supporter of Liz Cheney,” she said.
She said the former vice president shared “this real sadness, frankly, about what’s happening to our party and a real despair about how it’s possible that so many Republicans refuse to stand up and tell the truth.”
“And this is a scary moment for the nation,” she added.
Cheney says more will come from the committee this fall
Liz Chaney, who courted Democratic voters in the Wyoming primary, said she doesn’t view the committee’s work through the lens of political outcomes.
Cheney said the House panel will continue to present evidence in the coming months and that she expects the committee to “have an opinion” on referring criminal cases to the Justice Department.
“There’s a lot more that we haven’t shared in the hearings yet that we expect to share in the fall,” she said. “And we will also make decisions about referrals to criminal cases. And ultimately, the decision to prosecute rests with the Department of Justice. But I expect that the commission will have an opinion on it.”
Cheney said that during the committee’s investigation, she learned that Trump’s efforts to block the results of the 2020 election were “a more complex and far-reaching effort than I realized going into it.”
“I think all of us on the committee have had the same reaction, which is that there is so much, so much more going on in so many different areas, whether it’s pressure on government officials or pressure on the Department of Justice ” or attempts to get former Vice President Mike Pence to throw away the electoral votes of some states.
“The volume of information was more than I expected,” she said.
Cheney praised Pence for rejecting pressure from Trump. She said Pence, who as vice president oversaw the session of Congress where the electoral votes were officially counted, “was a hero on Jan. 6.”
“It’s very clear that there was enormous pressure on him from a number of different places. And he did his duty and didn’t give in to that pressure, and if he had given in to that pressure, things would have been very different,” she said. “And so I think we owe him credit for the way he conducted himself and for his refusal to do what Donald Trump wanted him to do, which would have been illegal.
Cheney faces voters on August 16
Cheney has said she expects to win the primary in less than two weeks, even as her opponents attack her role on the committee.
“I don’t expect to lose. I work hard to earn every single vote and, at the end of the day, I truly believe that the people of Wyoming fundamentally understand the importance of being faithful to the Constitution; understand how important it is to fight for these fundamental principles on which everything else is based,” she said.
But the congresswoman has made it clear that she is not softening her criticism of Trump at all — even if it costs her the House seat her father held and which she has held since 2017.
“We’re in a situation where former President Trump betrayed the patriotism of millions and millions of people in our country and a lot of people here in Wyoming, and he lied to them,” she said. “And what I do know is to tell the truth and make sure people understand the truth about what happened and why it’s so important.”
Asked why she thought voters believed Trump, Cheney added: “It’s just consistently lying about what happened in the election, playing on people’s patriotism. And he’s so dangerous that, you know, my view is that at the end of the day, if defending the Constitution against the threat that he poses means losing a seat in the House, then that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I have no intention of losing. But some things are more important than any individual office or political campaign.”
Cheney will not discuss his political plans after this month’s primaries. But she said she would do “whatever it takes” to prevent Trump from becoming the GOP presidential nominee for a third straight election in 2024.
She said she intends to be “a big part of making sure we protect the nation” from Trump, whether he wins re-election or not.
Cheney also urged members of both parties to unite against GOP candidates who have peddled Trump’s lies about election fraud and are seeking to take over the electoral machine in key states this fall.
“I don’t think anybody should vote for somebody who’s in denial about the election,” Cheney said. She described defeating those candidates as critical to preventing Trump from circumventing the will of American voters if he is nominated for president in 2024.
“I think we need to make sure we come together and form alliances across parties to make sure the people we elect don’t destroy the republic,” she said.
Cheney said the Democratic turnout in the race was “terrible.”
“All of us again, across party lines, need to make sure we support people who fundamentally believe in our democratic system,” she said. “And so I think it’s inexplicable and wrong for Democrats to bankroll denialists, especially against one of the 10 Republicans who so bravely stood up and did the right thing.”
CLARIFICATION: This headline and material have been updated to clarify the conditions Cheney believed would cast doubt on the US as a “nation of laws” and to include additional information from the interview.
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