Liz Cheney, the third most important Republican in the House of Representatives, raised the possibility that Donald Trump could be criminally investigated for causing violence during the January 6 US Capitol uprising, pointing to a tweet attacking his own vice president, Mike Pence, which was posted after the attack began.
In extraordinary comments on Fox News Sunday, Cheney made specific reference to the “massive criminal investigation” about the Capitol insurrection that is now sweeping the country. She said the investigation would cover “all aspects” of the January 6 events and look at “everyone who was involved”.
But she reserved her most incisive words for Trump. “People are going to want to know what the president was doing,” she said. “They will want to know if the tweet he sent calling Vice President Mike Pence a coward while the attack was underway was a premeditated attempt to provoke violence.”
Cheney’s evocation of a possible criminal case against the former president comes just two days before the start of his impeachment trial in the United States Senate for “inciting insurrection.” Although she does not participate as a judge on the trial – this role is played by senators – her comments signaled the turmoil the impending process is causing in her party.
Last week, she survived an attempt by Republican colleagues in the House to remove her from her leadership position in protest for her support for Trump’s impeachment. On Saturday, the Republican party in his home state, Wyoming, voted for his censorship, calling for his immediate resignation.
Cheney said on Sunday that he would not resign. “The oath I took to the constitution forced me to vote in favor of impeachment – it does not lean towards partisanship or political pressure, and I will maintain that.”
But the flurry of criticism surrounding it, coupled with its sharp reference to the possible criminal consequences for Trump, point to how the former president continues to upset the Republican Party to the point of threatening to tear it apart.
On Tuesday, he will make history in the United States by becoming the first president or former president to be subjected to an impeachment trial a second time.
Before historic proceedings, prominent Democrats attended Sunday’s political programs and spoke with passion about why Trump deserved to be condemned for his role in allegedly inciting the January 6 attack. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts congresswoman, asked senators to “honor his oath and hold Trump accountable, preventing him from taking office again.”
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, she recalled the “harrowing and traumatic” attack on the Capitol and placed it in a personal and historical context. “As a black woman, being locked in my office, on the floor, in the dark – this terror is familiar to me in a profound and ancient way.”
She said she was haunted by the image of black officials in the Capitol building cleaning up the mess caused by the white supremacy uprising. “This is a metaphor for America. We have been cleaning up the mobs of white supremacy for generations – and that should end, ”she said.
In contrast, there were few signs among Republican senators of any substantial appetite to condemn. If all 50 Democratic senators vote to do so, they still need to be accompanied by 17 Republican senators to achieve the two-thirds majority required by the constitution.
Rand Paul, the Republican senator for Kentucky, said Tuesday’s trial was an attempt to criminalize political speech. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, he said, “Are we going to impeach and potentially criminally prosecute people for political speech when they say ‘Stand up and fight for your country, let your voice be heard’?”
Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told NBC News Meet the Press that the trial was hasty. “There was no process. If it happened in the Soviet Union, you would call it a show trial
Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican senator who criticized Trump, told CNN that he thought it “very unlikely” that the former president would be convicted. Without conviction, senators would not be able to move to a new vote to prevent Trump from holding public office.
The impeachment case will be presented to senators by House officials. In their briefing, they claim that Trump “summoned a crowd to Washington, exhorted them to frenzy and aimed them like a cannon loaded down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
In a 14-page rebuttal, Trump’s lawyers argue that he was not involved in an insurrection and that his impeachment as a former president is unconstitutional.
The evidence stage of the Senate trial is likely to focus on Trump’s statements that led to the January 6 violence, which left five people dead. At a rally earlier in the day, Trump used visceral language, saying “we can’t take it anymore” and “you’ll never get back to our country with weakness”.
It is not known whether impeachment managers plan to highlight Trump’s tweet attacking 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 counting of the presidential election results that Trump lost.
“Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done,” Trump posted.
The tweet was posted about 10 minutes after it was reported that Pence had been removed from the Senate floor after the violent violation of the Capitol by Trump supporters and white supremacists. During the attack, members of the crowd could be heard singing “Hang Mike Pence.”