Liz Cheney urges Republican colleagues to stop ’embracing’ Trump

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (WY.) has urged his GOP colleagues to refrain from “embracing” former President Donald Trump as his Senate trial is set to begin.
• Cheney said that Trump’s impeachment trial would be a “snapshot” of his participation in the January 6 Capitol riot.
• The congresswoman was among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month following the Capitol siege.

As former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is set to start this week at the Senate, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (WY.) called on her fellow colleagues to distance themselves from the top Republican leader.

“We have to take a really hard look at who we are and what we stand for, what we believe in,” Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

“I think that when you look at both [Trump’s] actions leading up to Jan. 6, that he was impeached in a bipartisan fashion, the fact that he lost the presidency, the fact that we lost the Senate. We have to be in a position where we can say we stand for principles, for ideals,” she continued.

Cheney argued that they “should not be embracing the former president.”

Last month, 45 Senate GOPs voted that Trump’s impeachment trial is unconstitutional, which gives an indication that Trump won’t likely get convicted.

Even though the Democrats now have dominion over the Senate, they would still need at least 17 Republicans to officially declare Trump as guilty.

Per Cheney, the Senate trial would be “a snapshot” of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 Capitol siege.

“There’s a massive criminal investigation underway. There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on Jan. 6 and in the days before,” she said.

Cheney went on: “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They will want to know, for example, whether the tweet that he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence.”

The congresswoman added: “There are a lot of questions that have to be answered, and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved, as there should be… We have never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government, and that can never happen again.”

If she were a senator, Cheney said that she would make a thorough review of the evidence as well as the laid-down arguments before giving her verdict. She noted, though, that what was publicly known was an impeachable offense.

A third-ranking House GOP, Cheney was among the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment last month following his incitement of the US Capitol insurrection.

She drew criticisms from fellow GOPs following her vote, but was able to retain her position as House Republican Conference chair after securing a landslide vote (145-51) in a closed-door meeting with party members.

Source: AOL.com