Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, issued stark warnings amid the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
Thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6 in an effort to stop the 2020 presidential election results from being certified in Joe Biden’s favor. The then-president baselessly said that the election had been stolen from him via widespread fraud. In August 2023, Trump was indicted on four counts by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in relation to the riot, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pled not guilty and has said that the case against him is politically motivated as he remains the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Cheney, who has been amongst the most prominent GOP critics of Trump, served on the House select committee that investigated the riot, along with Kinzinger and seven other Democratic representatives. In December 2022, the committee published an 845-page report that said the former president was personally responsible for the riot and recommended he face criminal charges.
While serving in Congress, Kinzinger and Cheney were also among the 10 House Republicans who voted in support of impeaching Trump after the riot.
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On Friday while speaking to Dartmouth College students, Cheney issued a warning about Trump ahead of the 2024 election, adding her belief that Trump would refuse to hand over the reins of power if elected to a second term.
“He won’t leave office. He already tried not to leave office once. So I think there’s a lot of living in a fantasy world that’s going on with Republicans telling themselves, ‘Look, we’ll vote for him, it won’t be so bad.’ It may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast. It will be that bad,” the former congresswoman said.
Newsweek has reached out to Cheney and Trump via email for comment.
Cheney’s comments come after Trump faces legal challenges that seek to remove him from the ballot in several states, with two having already barred his name from primary voters’ consideration. The lawsuits argue that Trump is ineligible to run under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars officials who have sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution from holding office if they engaged in insurrection.
Maine became the second state after Colorado to remove the former president from its 2024 ballot, preventing him from participating in its primary in March.
Trump has maintained that he did not engage in an insurrection and has accused those filing lawsuits against him of attempting election interference. The former president has also filed an appeal against the decision, which the U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it will take up. Oral arguments are set to begin on February 8.
Cheney praised Colorado and Maine’s efforts to remove Trump from the primary ballot, saying that there’s “no question” his actions on January 6 fall within the language of the 14th Amendment.
“I don’t believe he should be part of our political process,” she said. “And this is a process that will go through the courts and that we’ll see sort of how that unfolds. But there’s no question in my mind that his actions clearly constituted an offense that is within the language of the 14th Amendment.”
Cheney also said on Friday that Trump’s actions that day “threaten the very foundations of our democracy,” while urging New Hampshire voters to reject him in the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary later this month.
“In a little over two weeks, when you in New Hampshire go to the polls, the world will be watching. And so, New Hampshire, I ask you this: speak for us all,” Cheney said. “Show the world that we will defeat the plague of cowardice sweeping through the Republican Party.”
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Kinzinger took to X, formerly Twitter, to share a video warning voters about Trump, adding that the anniversary of the riot is a time to “expose and shine light upon the lies.”
“Donald Trump is running again because he’s a small, frightened man who sees the justice he deserves for #Jan6 and countless other crimes catching up to him,” the former congressman wrote on X.
Kinzinger added that the 2024 election is about a single issue, democracy, as the anniversary of the riot aims to remind voters of how to learn from history.
“Today the third anniversary of this stain on our democracy is not a day just to revisit darkness, but rather is a perfect time to expose and shine a light upon lies. I’ve always said democracies are not judged by their bad days, but by how we emerge from them. And that history has yet to be written,” Kinzinger said.
Newsweek has also reached out to Kinzinger via Instagram and his political action committee for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.