The chairman of the Jan. 6 House Committee is out with Covid-19. So, after giving opening remarks via video, when the panel convenes for its last scheduled prime-time hearing of the summer Thursday night, he’ll pass the gavel to Rep. Liz Cheney. But for all intents and purposes, it was The Liz Chaney Show all along.
Through six weeks of televised hearings in this season of reckoning, she has emerged as the lead storyteller and chief prosecutor, persuading reluctant former officials to come forward, issuing stark warnings against witness tampering and taking the story out one damning fact at a time to argue that former President Donald J. Trump has betrayed the constitution out of hunger for power.
In an even, measured voice, belying the outrage she felt, Ms. Cheney confronted her party’s leader and called out those who did it, becoming Mr. Trump’s most prominent antagonist, even though the Justice Department is in no rush to consider what to do and President Biden is largely sitting on the sidelines. She has become the unlikely hero of many who once slandered her family and the pariah of fellow Republicans with whom she once worked closely, possibly sacrificing her political career in the process.
“I don’t look at it through a political lens,” she said in an interview this week between preparing statements for Thursday’s hearing. “I look at it from the point of view of: People need to understand how dangerous he is and how unfit to serve.”
“I believe it’s the most important thing I’ve done professionally,” she added, “and maybe the most important thing I’ve ever done.”
It’s no accident that the committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans put Ms. Cheney forward as the most visible presenter and questioner. She was a Republican long before Mr. Trump, supported most of his policies, and voted for him twice. For the most part, she remains as conservative as ever, making it difficult to dismiss the investigation as a liberal partisan witch hunt.
Former President Donald J. Trump lashed out at Ms Cheney on social media, disparaging her as a “despicable human being”. Credit… Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
But Mr. Trump and his allies nonetheless cast her as a traitor used by Democrats to bring him down. She gets under Mr. Trump’s skin more than most. Watching the hearings on television, Mr Trump denounced Ms Cheney in front of friends and allies, lashed out on social media and belittled her as a “despicable human being”.
He is hoping for revenge in next month’s Wyoming Republican primary, in which one of his supporters is favored to unseat Ms. Cheney in Congress.
“It’s unfortunate that Liz Cheney’s last act in politics will be to help Democrats in the midterm elections,” Jason Miller, a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, said this week. “A sad and bitter end to a legendary political family.”
It was this family that brought her to this point, in a way. When Ms. Cheney watches the video showing Vice President Mike Pence being pushed by Secret Service agents from a mob of Trump supporters threatening to hang him, she sees another vice president in another day of peril.
“Every time I see him, I’m reminded of the image of Jimmy Scott, the Secret Service agent who evacuated my father down the stairs,” said Mrs. Cheney, recalling how Vice President Dick Cheney was rushed to an underground bunker like a hijacked plane rushed to the nation’s capital on September 11, 2001. “That evacuation was because Al Qaeda was targeting Washington, and Mike Pence was evacuated because a violent armed mob that Donald Trump had sent to the Capitol was storming the Capitol. “
For Liz Chaney, Mr. Trump is also an existential threat to the institutions of American society, and she has made it her single-minded mission to uncover what the former president did and stop him from doing it again.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney with his daughter, Mrs. Cheney, at the Capitol on the anniversary of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Cheney advised his daughter on how to approach the hearings. Credit… Al Drago for The New York Times
She is like her father in that sense, driven and determined and unfazed by waves of criticism, and she cites him as her inspiration even now. They talk almost every day and he advises her on how to approach these hearings. He accompanied her to the Capitol on the anniversary of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021, when other Republicans stayed away.
On the wall of her office, visible in some of the videotapes of testimony shown during the hearings, is a photo of her father when he was secretary of defense, sitting with President George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser ; the president held a book about Soviet military power. She sees the image as a reminder that politics requires serious people.
All of this has led to a strange alliance of friendship with Democrats who disagree with her on nothing but her disdain for Mr. Trump. She perfectly understands why they want her in charge, that the Republican face is useful to them. But she has come to believe that the Democrats she works with are also serious about saving the country as she sees it.
“I’m sure it’s as strange to them as it is to me,” Ms. Cheney said of spending so much time with Democrats. She became close with some of them, especially Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and some of them told her they couldn’t wait for the day when they could disagree with her again.
“It will mean that our politics are right,” she said.
In a separate interview, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and another member of the committee, acknowledged that teaming up with Ms. Cheney was testing expectations. “It was certainly surreal at first,” he said.
But he said Ms. Cheney and her fellow Republican on the panel, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, had helped Democrats better understand how to frame their case to appeal to open-minded Republicans and make the politically charged investigation less biased.
If Ms. Cheney feels the stress of the moment, Mr. Schiff added, she hides it well.
“She doesn’t show it,” he said. “She’s tough. She is stubborn. She is smart. She has a great work ethic. She knows who she is, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that she’s stayed true to her conservative ideology. It’s that so many in her party have moved away from conservatism to embrace Trumpism. She was incredibly consistent.”
One intriguing exception came just this week, when Ms. Cheney voted for a bill that would enshrine same-sex marriage into law along with nearly four dozen other House Republicans. Ms. Cheney made headlines in 2013 during a brief Senate campaign when she opposed same-sex marriage, even though her sister Mary was married to another woman. Liz Cheney said last year that she was wrong, and Mary publicly praised her courage.
Liz Cheney, who turns 56 next week, has long been one of her party’s fiercest voices on foreign affairs and a fierce supporter of the Iraq war, like her father, but not an enthusiastic culture warrior. She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago and practiced briefly at the firm White & Case and worked as a State Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush before winning her father’s old seat in Congress in 2016.
Ms. Cheney became close with a fellow committee member, Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland. Credit… Doug Mills/New York Times
As the hearings unfolded this summer, she became a household name like never before, stopping in hallways and airports for selfies or handshakes. “It’s almost entirely friendly and really exciting,” she said. “People across the political spectrum saying thank you, especially young people.”
But there’s a reason she’s had to travel with a security detail for the past year, and she hasn’t missed the ire it’s caused.
As much or more than any panelist, she participates in most interviews and her questions are sometimes shown in video excerpts. Her incredulous look when Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he thought the violence was justified on Jan. 6 spoke volumes.
Mrs. Cheney persuaded Republicans to testify when Democrats might not have. They include Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. “Two witnesses who spoke to the committee told me that a major factor in their willingness to come forward was that Liz made them feel comfortable and allowed them to speak,” said Alyssa Farah, a White staffer. home who resigned after the election rather than be part of the effort to overturn it. “She has an innate ability to connect with people.”
Ms. Cheney also shaped the committee’s strategy. When Democrats wanted to use parts of Ms. Hutchinson’s explosive testimony in earlier hearings, a Democratic aide said that Ms. Cheney insisted that she save them for a hearing in which she would participate in full, believing that she would greater impact.
During the hearings, her tone was purposefully subdued. Where Mr. Schiff delivered a fair-minded prosecutorial oratory during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial and Mr. Raskin offered engaging professorial storytelling during the second, Ms. Cheney preferred the approach of a judge who of the facts.
However, as flat as her voice may have been, her words are strong and uncompromising. Mr. Trump “is a 76-year-old man” and “not an impressionable child,” she said, and is therefore responsible for his actions. She warned fellow Republicans that “the day will come when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Ms. Cheney helped persuade Cassidy Hutchinson, a former member of the Trump White House…
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