Defiant Cheney Says She Won’t Quit After Wyoming GOP’s Censure

(Bloomberg) -- Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranked Republican in the House, said she won’t step down after the GOP in Wyoming voted to formally censure her for voting to impeach former President Donald Trump.

“The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment and it doesn’t bend to partisanship, it doesn’t bend to political pressure,” Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Cheney added that the Republican Party has a lot of work to do ahead of 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election because many people within the party “are mistaken” about recent events and have been lied to.

“They believe that BLM and Antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. It’s just simply not the case, not true and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do,” she said.

“The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6 spread the notion that the election was stolen or the election was rigged was a lie,” Cheney said.

The Wyoming Republican Party on Saturday approved a measure calling on Cheney to resign. The party plans to withhold any future funding from her and demanded that she repay donations state and county Republican Party groups made to her 2020 re-election campaign.

Cheney’s censure in the latest example of fissures within the Republican Party between members who’ve split with the former president and those who continue to defend him.

House Republicans on Wednesday opted by a wide margin to keep Cheney in the No. 3 role in House party leadership. Speaking in her own defense, Cheney didn’t apologize for her Jan. 13 vote to impeach Trump, saying it was an act of conscience that she stands by. She argued that she should continue in her leadership role.

However, the fact that almost a third of the conference voted against her underscores deep divisions among Republicans over the direction of the party and the level of its future allegiance to Trump.

‘Fight Like Hell’

In late January, GOP Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump loyalist, flew to Wyoming to slam Cheney during a rally in her home state. Trump received almost 70% of the vote in Wyoming in November’s presidential election.

Cheney, 54, is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. She was one of 10 House Republicans who vote to impeach Trump on an article that said he incited an insurrection at the Capitol after a Jan. 6 speech, where he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn the presidential election results.

His supporters breached the Capitol, which resulted in five deaths, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police.

Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate begins on Tuesday, where he’ll probably be acquitted.

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