Cheney on Trump impeachment vote: ‘The oath that I took … doesn’t bend to partisanship’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is standing by her vote to impeach former President Trump, saying on Sunday that despite Republican backlash, she felt “compelled” to support impeachment.

“I think people all across Wyoming understand and recognize that our duty is to the Constitution,” Cheney said on “Fox News Sunday” in response to the Wyoming Republican Party voting to censure her on Saturday.

“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,” she added. “It’s the most important oath that we take, and so I will stand by that, and I will continue to fight for all of the issues that matter so much to us all across Wyoming.”

Cheney, the highest-ranking House Republican to back impeachment, survived a vote on whether she would remain House Republican Conference chairwoman last week in a 145-61 vote.

The congresswoman on Sunday specifically blamed Trump’s unproven conspiracy theories about election theft for the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, saying that “people have been lied to.”

“We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth, that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024,” she said.

Cheney went on to fault her own party for not dealing with conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic statements by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whom the full House voted to remove from committee assignments last week.

Asked by host Chris Wallace whether Trump should remain a standard-bearer in the party, Cheney responded, “We should not be embracing the former president.”

She would not say whether she would vote to convict him in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, saying that if she were in the upper chamber, she would listen to the testimony and the evidence.