Cheney, House GOP conference chair and the No. 3 Republican, announced Tuesday how she would vote when the House met to vote on impeachment Wednesday.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement that, while not unexpected, shook Congress as lawmakers prepared for a Wednesday House vote. With Democrats commanding that chamber, a vote impeaching Trump for an unprecedented second time seemed certain.
Some of Trump's dearest allies began taking action to remove Cheney from leadership, according to Politico.
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Freedom Caucus members reportedly started circulating an appeal Wednesday to force a special conference meeting so they could discuss and vote on a determination calling on Cheney to leave her post.
Only 42 members (20%) of the House GOP are required to sign the petition to push the meeting. However, a majority of the conference would need to agree to the decision for it to be utilized in a secret-ballot vote.
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"The conference ought to vote on that," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a co-founder of the arch-conservative caucus, said Wednesday. "We ought to have a second vote."
More ominously for a president hanging to his final week in office, The New York Times reported that powerful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks Trump did an impeachable offense and is happy Democrats are taking action to impeach him.
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Citing unidentified people familiar with the influential Kentucky Republican’s thinking, the Times reported McConnell thinks moving against Trump will help the GOP form a future independent of the divisive, turbulent president.
McConnell thinks Trump’s behavior before last week’s assault on the Capitol by fuming Trump supporters cost Republicans their Senate majority in two Georgia runoff elections, the newspaper reported. That’s a viewpoint shared by many Republicans about Trump, who rather than focusing on supporting Georgia’s two sitting GOP senators spent the last weeks of their campaign describing his false narrative that his own reelection was destroyed by Democratic election fraud.
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McConnell is said to be mad at the president over the charge on the Capitol and the twin defeats in Georgia that cost the party it's Senate majority, according to a Republican granted anonymity to discuss the situation.
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Cheney was commonly reelected to her position in November.
Politico received a copy of the resolution, which states Cheney's position "does not reflect that of the majority of the Republican Conference and has brought the Conference into disrepute and produced discord."
After two hours of passionate debate, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for the second time in his term of office. Cheney was one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach.
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