In an interview this weekend on the CBS program “Face The Nation,” former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming condemned the path taken by latest Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
Johnson infamously helped lead after the 2020 presidential race some of the opposition from House Republicans to the certification of that contest’s results moving forward.
Those efforts included a filing in support of a failed Texas lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s victories in four other states. Johnson also helped gin up opposition in the context of voting in Congress on whether to certify the electoral votes that Biden won. Johnson claimed that Cheney herself considered signing the brief that Johnson led and that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which she denied this weekend. The failed case was officially rejected about a month before the Congressional proceedings scheduled for certifying the 2020 results.
“You know, we had dozens of state and federal courts that assessed the claims, assessed the Constitutionality and rejected them. And Mike’s position, which people really need to think about because it’s so chilling, is that somehow as a member of Congress, he has the right to ignore the rulings of those courts, to assert absent any finding of fact that somehow he feels that something that happened was unconstitutional, and therefore, that he can throw out the votes of millions of Americans,” Cheney said. She characterized this approach as out of step with the basics of what should be seen in government.
Johnson, like other Republicans, has not made any significant break with past positions taken around the 2020 presidential election and its results, despite the total lack of evidence meaningfully supporting the conspiracy theory of systematic fraud. Trump himself also continues promoting these conspiracy theories. Prosecutors in Trump’s case over his post-2020 election schemes have said they intend to point at trial to his post-presidency expressions of support for even individual Capitol riot participants in seeking to establish his mindset and intentions.
Liz Cheney on Mike Johnson: “Mike’s position … is that somehow as a member of Congress, he has a right to ignore the rulings of courts … & therefore that he can throw out the votes of millions of Americans. That’s tyranny. It’s not the rule of law.” pic.twitter.com/aeImCL0jJh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2024
