Liz Cheney, the third most senior Republican in the House of Representatives, has raised the possibility that Donald Trump will be criminally investigated for provoking violence during the January 6 uprising of the US Capitol, pointing to a tweet that his own vice president, Mike Pence, attack. was posted after the assault started.
In extraordinary remarks on Fox News Sunday, Cheney specifically referred to the “massive criminal investigation” into the Capitol uprising that is now sweeping the country. She said the investigation would cover ‘every aspect’ of the events on January 6 and look at ‘everyone involved’.
But she reserved her sharpest words for Trump. “People will want to know what the president is doing,” she said. “They will want to know if the tweet he sent to name Vice President Mike Pence a coward while the attack was going on was a deliberate attempt to provoke violence.”
Cheney’s call for possible criminal action against the former president comes just two days before the start of his indictment in the US Senate due to ‘incitement to rebellion’. Although she will not be taking part in the trial as a jury member – the role is being played by senators, this indicates the unrest that is causing the impending proceedings in her party.
Last week, she survived an attempt by fellow Republicans to remove her from her leadership position in protest of her support for Trump’s accusation. On Saturday, the Republican Party in her home state of Wyoming voted to deny her and asked her to resign immediately.
Cheney said Sunday she will not retire. “The oath I took to the constitution forced me to vote for accusation – it does not bend to bias or political pressure, and I will stick to it.”
But the whirlwind of criticism around her, coupled with her sharp reference to possible criminal consequences for Trump, suggests how the former president continues to stir up the Republican Party, to the point that he threatens to tear it apart.
On Tuesday, he will make American history by becoming the first sitting or former president to be subjected to an indictment for a second time.
Prior to the historic proceedings, prominent Democrats tackled the Sunday political rallies and spoke with passion about why Trump deserves to be convicted for his role in the January 6 assault. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts congresswoman, called on senators to “honor their oath and hold Trump accountable and prevent him from ever holding office again.”
On CNN’s State of the Union, she recalled the ‘disturbing and traumatic’ assault on the Capitol and placed it in a personal and historical context. “As a black woman, to block in my office, on the ground, in the dark, the horror is known to me in a deep and ancestral way.”
She said she was haunted by the image of black staff in the Capitol building clearing the mess caused by the white supremacy of the supremacy. “It’s a metaphor for America. “We have been keeping clean for white supremacist crowds for generations – and it must end,” she said.
In contrast, Republican senators had few signs of any substantial appetite for being convicted. If all 50 Democratic senators vote for it, 17 Republican senators will still have to join them to achieve the two-thirds majority required by the constitution.
Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, said Tuesday that the trial is an attempt to criminalize political speech. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, he said: “Are we going to prosecute and punish our people for political speech if they say, ‘Get up and fight for your country, let your voice be heard?’ “
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told Meet the Press NBC News that the trial has been canceled. “There was no process. If it happened in the Soviet Union, you would call it a show trial. ‘
Pat Toomey, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania who criticized Trump, told CNN that he considered it “very unlikely” that the former president would be convicted. Without conviction, senators would not have been able to move to a further vote to prevent Trump from ever holding public office.
The case for indictment will be presented to the senators by the house managers. In their order, they claim that Trump summoned a crowd to Washington, admonished them to madness and aimed them like a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue.
In a 14-page rebuttal, Trump’s lawyers argue that he did not revolt and that the accusation of him as a former president is unconstitutional.
The testimony phase of the Senate hearing is likely to focus on Trump’s remarks that led to the January 6 violence that left five people dead. During a rally earlier in the day, Trump used complicated language, saying ‘we will not take it again’ and ‘you will never take back our country with weakness’.
It is not known whether accusation managers plan to single out Trump’s tweet attack on Pence. In the tweet, which has now been removed from Twitter as part of Trump’s suspension from the platform, he criticized the then vice president for not blocking the score of the election results of the presidential election that Trump lost. .
“Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what needed to be done,” Trump posted.
The tweet was posted about ten minutes after it was reported that Pence had been diverted from the Senate floor after the violent violation of the Capitol by Trump supporters and white supremacists. During the attack, members of the mob could be heard drone song “Hang Mike Pence Up”.