Trump is ‘at war with the rule of law’ says Liz Cheney ahead of Capitol riot anniversary

GOP congresswoman warns former president can never be allowed ‘anywhere near the Oval Office again’

Congresswoman Liz Cheney (Getty Images)

Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming has reiterated her belief that Donald Trump is unfit for office, stating that she believes the former president is “at war with the rule of law”.

Ms Cheney made the remarks in a pair of interviews with CBS’s Face the Nation and ABC’s This Week on Sunday. The Wyoming congresswoman said that as the one-year anniversary of the deadly riot at the Capitol approaches this week, Mr Trump is only likely to intensify his false claims about the 2020 election.

Mr Trump “has demonstrated that he is at war with the rule of law”, said the congresswoman on CBS, adding: “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 continued: “[I]f what he has been saying since he left office is any indication, former President Trump is likely again this week to make the same false claims about the election that he knows to be false and the same false claims about the election that he knows caused violence on January.”

Her remarks continued on ABC, where she said that Mr Trump “cannot be trusted” to follow the rules of US democracy fairly in the future, should he run for office in 2024 or beyond. With his repeated falsehoods regarding supposed widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and the subsequent efforts of his supporters to stop Congress from certifying the election results, the ex-president “crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before”, said Ms Cheney.

Former Pres. Trump “crossed lines no American president has ever crossed before,” GOP Rep. Liz Cheney says.

“When a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the coordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.” https://t.co/XgWWqheWM4 pic.twitter.com/0jDiPTFVxS

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 2, 2022

Ms Cheney is one of two Republicans serving on the House’s select committee investigating the 6 January, 2020 attack on the US Capitol. She serves as the panel’s ranking member and vice chair, and works closely with Rep Bennie Thompson, who is leading the investigation as the committee’s leading Democrat.

The panel has gathered evidence from dozens of Mr Trump’s allies over the past several months, while moving to punish members of the former president’s circle including Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon, for their refusal to fully comply with congressional subpoenas for information.

Through the committee’s investigation, new information has emerged in recent weeks regarding the shock that erupted among supporters of the president when the riot began, including the president’s eldest son and a number of Fox News hosts, who were privately urging the president to call off the mob while going on later to publicly diminish the severity of the attack or attempt to blame left-wing protesters for the violence.

The panel’s efforts have also revealed that Republican members of the House including Rep Jim Jordan were working with Mr Trump’s inner circle in an attempt to convince Vice President Mike Pence to interfere with the Senate’s certification of the Electoral College vote count on January 6. Mr Pence’s refusal to do so was a subject of ire for rioters who chanted “hang Mike Pence” as they stormed the building and ransacked offices.