Lawmaker Liz Cheney will draw the spotlight nationally when the House selection committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Uprising holds its first public hearing Thursday afternoon. The Wyoming Republican serves as vice chairman of the committee and is one of only two Republicans on the nine-member committee. But unlike her retired Republican counterpart, Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, Cheney is facing a competitive race to retain her seat in Congress and has been targeted by former President Donald Trump, who has backed him. challenged by Harriet Hagemann. The wiretaps offer an opportunity for Cheney, who voted to refer Trump for his role in the Capitol Uprising, to present her case directly to home voters and to defend her position ahead of her Aug. 16 qualifiers. Cheney’s team showed the Insider two interviews it had this week, which it referred to at the next January 6 auditions. “People need to pay attention, people need to watch and they need to understand how easily our democratic system can disintegrate if we do not defend it,” Cheney told CBS Sunday Morning, adding that she believed the uprising was a conspiracy that it is “extremely wide”. and “well organized”. Some of her allies and supporters hope that voters will also pay attention. “She has set a goal to go on an investigative mission,” Ganer Ramer, political director of the anti-Trump group Republican Accountability, told Insider. “To understand exactly what led to January 6, what Trump did during the Capitol attack.” “I hope voters see this, and this is not a partisan witch-hunt as some Republicans have argued,” Ramer added. Cheney has become one of the harshest critics of Trump in Congress in response to the deadly violence that erupted in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She joined all Democrats and just nine other Republicans in the House by voting to oust Trump. “Incitement to revolt.” The top Republican on the Jan. 6 panel, Cheney, took the most aggressive approach to Trump and pushed the committee to focus on the former president, according to a Washington Post report last month. Cheney’s colleagues said she is the most prepared and informed legislator on the panel, the Post reported. A former ally of Trump, Cheney has repeatedly explained her criticism of him in interviews and public statements over the past year. He denounced Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, blamed him for the Capitol uprising and described him as a threat to American democracy. Landon Brown, a Wyoming State lawmaker who backs Cheney, told Insider before the hearing that he believed the commission “will eventually reach a point where even those who were somewhat on the fence with Donald Trump will see that he was trying to secure his authoritarian power “. “It will rub a lot of people the wrong way, and I think the only way to do that is by doing what it does,” Brown told Cheney. Although Cheney’s most loyal supporters have largely written off Cheney, the incumbent hopes to win her state by presenting herself as a supporter of the Constitution and a Wyoming fighter. The stakes are high as the Cowboys State is formed on the battlefield between Trump’s MAGA base and the traditional Republicans. “I support what he says,” Brown said. “But I think the message needs to be more about what he’s done for Wyoming, not just what he’s doing to oust Trump.” Cheney said her goal is to show the public what happened on January 6 to ensure it never happens again. “If we really want to understand why January 6th is a line that can never be crossed again, then we really need to put politics and partisanship aside and say what happened,” the lawmaker told Dispatch Live on Tuesday night. . “Let us understand what happened and let us do what we can to protect ourselves from it in the future.” The Jan. 6 selection committee, formed in May last year, interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and examined thousands of documents in its investigation into the Capitol attack and its aftermath. Thursday’s hearing is one of six the committee intends to hold to reveal its findings. Cheney has hinted in the past that the commission has gathered enough evidence to refer Trump to criminal charges, although it is unclear how the commission will proceed. A committee representative on January 6 did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.
