Liz Cheney: Constitutional checks, balances won’t stop Trump abuses

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is no longer in Congress, but she’s not slowing in her efforts to warn Republicans about the danger of electing former President Trump in 2024.

“The risk is far too great to elect Mr. Trump ever again,” Cheney wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

Cheney represented Wyoming in the House from 2017-23, but she lost her reelection bid after Trump endorsed her challenger, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.).

She chaired the panel tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, during which hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s 2020 win.

“Have we forgotten how a depraved Donald Trump sat and watched the violent mob attack our Capitol and refused for multiple hours to instruct them to stand down and disperse?” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “He is the same exceptionally dangerous and flawed man today.”

Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. But the former president, who is the leading GOP candidate for the party’s 2024 nomination, got on Truth Social on Dec. 4 to mock “Crazy Liz Cheney” and dismiss her concerns.

Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” was released this month, and she’s given several news interviews and made talk show appearances in recent weeks.

“The framers explicitly warned us that the checks and balances are only as effective as the people responsible for carrying them out,” Cheney wrote in the Journal piece. “Those who try to dismiss the risk of a second Trump term do our country a grave disservice.”

In the column, Cheney criticizes Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Ted Cruz (Texas) JD Vance (Ohio) and Mike Lee (Utah) by name.

“House Republicans are even worse,” she writes.

“Given recent history, it would be foolish to expect Republicans to impeach and convict in a second term, no matter what Mr. Trump does,” Cheney adds.

She recently called out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who won’t run for reelection and said he will resign this year, after he said he would be open to serving in a future Trump administration “in the right position.”

“It’s pathetic,” Cheney said during an MSNBC appearance this week. “There’s sort of an element of — it doesn’t really matter what Donald Trump has done to the country, what Donald Trump has done to the Congress, Donald Trump has done to Kevin McCarthy …”