Liz Cheney rips Vance after Jan. 6 remarks: Not ‘fit to serve’

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) went after Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) on Monday, saying he is not “fit to serve” after he said he would have chosen not to certify the 2020 election results without pro-Trump electors.

Vance said Sunday in an ABC “This Week” interview he would have allowed states to send multiple slates of electors to Washington after the 2020 election and “Congress should have fought over it from there,” adding there “were problems” in the 2020 election.

“Yesterday, J.D. Vance claimed that Trump could defy rulings of the Supreme Court as President,” Cheney wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Vance also admitted he would have done what VP Pence refused to do on January 6th — help Trump illegally seize power.” 

“That’s tyranny,” she continued. “Neither Trump nor Vance is fit to serve.”

Then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to allow multiple slates of electors for the certification of the 2020 election, as the Constitution lays out, and did ultimately certify the results after thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop it.

Vance also doubled down on September 2021 comments that the president can ignore “illegitimate” Supreme Court rulings, quoting President Andrew Jackson. 

“The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,” Vance quoted in the 2021 podcast. Jackson made the comment in 1832 in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling establishing the supremacy of federal law over states in matters of Native American tribes. Jackson later had Southern tribes forcibly removed from their territories.

“The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings … but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling,” Vance said Sunday.

Later in the interview, Vance also said the verdicts in New York legal cases against former President Trump should be thrown out, citing jurors from “extremely left-wing jurisdictions.”

Cheney and Vance have clashed in the past. She endorsed his 2022 general election opponent, then-Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). Vance’s campaign dissed the endorsement as a “kiss of death” for Ryan at the time.

The Hill has reached out to Vance’s office for comment.