Rep. Liz Cheney, one of former President Donald Trump’s most virulent critics, claimed on Sunday that he can’t be given access to the Oval Office again because she claims he is “at war with the rule of law.”
Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and co-chair of the Democrat-run Jan. 6 Committee, also suggested in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Trump could be held criminally liable for the Capitol riot.
Host Margaret Brenner asked Cheney, “You’ve raised in the past the possibility of criminal culpability for the president. Is that the consensus view of the committee?”
“Look, the committee is obviously going to follow the facts wherever they lead. We’ve made tremendous progress. We have had now- if you just think about, for example, what we know now about what the former president was doing on the 6th while the attack was underway,” Cheney replied.
“The committee has firsthand testimony that President Trump was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office, watching on television as the Capitol was assaulted as the violence occurred. We know that that is clearly a supreme dereliction of duty,” she claimed.
“One of the things that the committee is looking at from the perspective of our legislative purpose is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty. But we’ve certainly never seen anything like that as a nation before,” Cheney continued.
Brennan said in response:
But one of the things that we’ve seen in CBS polling is that there is just a hard percentage of the population that believes what the former president is claiming. Eight million people believe in violence to restore him to office. Seven out of 10 Republicans still believe President Biden’s illegitimate, 66% believe there was widespread voter fraud. So, these numbers are pretty hard here. Why hasn’t this conviction abated within your party?
Cheney turned the question into another Trump referendum.
“Look, I think that- that we are in a situation where people have got to understand the danger of President Trump and the danger that he posed on that day. You know, if you think he- he could have simply walked a few feet to the White House briefing room, he could have gone immediately on live television and asked his supporters to stop what was happening, ask them to go home,” she told Brennan.
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“He failed to do that. He instead, we know, had the motivation, at the same time, the violent assault was happening, he’s watching television, he’s also calling at least one senator urging delay of the electoral vote,” Cheney added.
“So, this is a man who has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law. He’s demonstrated that he’s willing to blow through every guardrail of democracy, and he can never be anywhere near the Oval Office again,” she said.
“He’s demonstrated a complete lack of fitness for office. I think one of the really important things that our committee has to do is lay these facts out for the American people so that they really have a sense of the truth of what happened that day,” the Wyoming Republican said.
In fact, it is she who is out of step with her own party, as evidenced by the fact that she was removed from the House GOP’s No. 3 position last year in an overwhelming vote to be replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York.