Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming sparked backlash on Monday from supporters of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement when she urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Trump’s presidential immunity claim.
Trump filed an appeal of the rejected claim that presidential immunity should shield him from facing federal election interference charges. A federal appeals court ruled this month that Trump is not immune from criminal prosecution, allowing Special Counsel Jack Smith to prosecute Trump on the four criminal charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his alleged role in the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The former president has pleaded not guilty and said the case against him is politically motivated.
The filing claims that Trump was indicted for “his official acts as president” and argues that not granting a stay in the case would mean that “irreparable injury to [former] President Trump is inevitable.” The Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the case.
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, Cheney, who has grown critical of the direction of the GOP and of Trump, urged the Supreme Court to shut down the former president’s claim of presidential immunity.
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“It’s been 3+ years since Jan 6 and Americans have a right to hear the grand jury evidence against Trump in open court. Putin may be immune from Russian law—and thus able to freely kill dissidents—but it should be obvious to the Supreme Court that a U.S. President isn’t,” Cheney wrote on X, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Friday’s death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony.
Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the riot, and she served on the House select committee that investigated the riot, sparking conservative backlash. She ultimately lost her primary election in 2022 to Trump-backed Harriet Hageman, who now represents the state in Congress.
Newsweek has reached out to Cheney’s faculty email at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and to Trump’s spokesperson via email for comment.
Since her comments, Cheney has faced backlash from some MAGA supporters.
X user Dory Beutel wrote: “@Liz_Cheney is contributing to a DC crime spree pretending she’s “defending democracy.” It’s all fruit of the poisonous Russian collusion fraud. Imagine the foreign policy implications of DC’s great deceit.”
User Dave took aim at Cheney’s loss to Hagemen by writing: “Enjoy your time out of Congress. Walmart needs greeters.”
User super_ultraMAGA said: “You better pray Trump doesn’t win. There’s gonna be hell to pay if he does. People like you should be tried for treason.”
But user death2freedom wrote: “Totally agree, but I’d take it one step further. Anyone who denies that January 6th was an insurrection and a near fatal blow to democracy must be sent to Gitmo immediately.”
Cheney’s comments came after the former congresswoman warned on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday about Trump’s bid for president as she reiterated her criticism of his comments about NATO.
At a rally this month, Trump sparked bipartisan backlash after saying he would “encourage” Putin to do “whatever the hell” he wants to NATO members who insufficiently contribute financially to the military alliance.
Cheney warned that “[Trump] has basically made clear that under a Trump administration, the United States is unlikely to keep its NATO commitments. We have to take Donald Trump very seriously. We have to take seriously the extent to which you’ve now got a Putin wing in the Republican Party. I believe the issue this election cycle is making sure the Putin wing of the Republican Party does not take over the West Wing of the White House.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.