众议员利兹·切尼将会最后一次高调亮相当众议院1月6日委员会周一举行最后一次公开会议时，反对唐纳德·特朗普——有消息称，该委员会正准备推荐首次刑事指控对抗前总统。
这位怀俄明州共和党人花费了她的政治生涯来对抗特朗普，但她说她不后悔她有更高的使命:阻止他重新入主白宫。
在投票弹劾特朗普之后，然后接受邀请为了在特别委员会任职，她失去了众议院共和党第三号领导职位，并最终失去了国会席位。
但在这样做的时候，她也赢得了意想不到的支持者，因为她揭露了她所说的特朗普窃取选举的七点计划，并告诫她的共和党同事，她说，他们缺乏同样的勇气。
“在我们国家，我们不会向个人或政党宣誓。我们宣誓捍卫美国宪法，这一誓言必须有意义，”切尼在6月举行的首次黄金时段公开听证会上说。“今晚，我要对那些为站不住脚的事情辩护的共和党同事们说:唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)终有一天会离开，但你们的耻辱将永远存在。”
“捍卫这一和平权力移交的神圣义务得到了每一位美国总统的尊重——除了一位，”她补充道。“作为美国人，我们都有责任确保1月6日发生的事情不再发生，搁置党派斗争，团结一致，维护我们伟大的共和国。”
切尼是九人小组中的两名共和党人之一，但与去年宣布不会寻求连任的众议员亚当·金辛格不同，切尼在委员会任职期间继续她的竞选活动，并将她作为一名关键人物。在8月份的初选失利后，她告诉美国广播公司(ABC)驻华盛顿首席记者乔纳森·卡尔(Jonathan Karl)，如果她想挽救自己的职业生涯，保住她已经占据了近六年的众议院席位，就需要做一些她不愿意做的事情:“在选举上撒谎，”她说。
虽然该委员会的九名成员轮流领导国会听证会，但切尼的清晰和信念常常抢走了聚光灯，她的行为非常像一名刑事检察官在审理针对特朗普的案件。
“利兹真的是明星，”美国企业研究所高级退休研究员、政治学家诺曼·奥恩斯坦告诉美国广播公司新闻。“她首先是明星，因为她的名字，她的智慧，你很难找到比她更保守的人。所有这些都增加了她的影响力。”
“事实上，她在这个过程中一直无所畏惧，知道这很可能会让她失去她的席位，因为它知道她会受到死亡威胁等等，她非常清楚地表明，她在这里的首要任务是保护民主，防止有人试图摧毁它，包括唐纳德·特朗普，”他补充道。“所有这一切，加上她在委员会中处理表现的娴熟方式，这是一份相当不错的遗产。”
前弗吉尼亚州众议员芭芭拉·康斯托克是共和党人，也是美国广播公司的新闻撰稿人，她曾在众议院与切尼共事，并为她的连任竞选捐款，她认为委员会能够确保证人的安全，否则他们可能会因为切尼的声誉而有困难。
康斯托克说:“因为她认识这里的所有球员，而且曾经认识他们，所以她没有让他们藏起来。”“我认为她明白，归根结底，如果我们把这些人拉进来，他们不会为他而死。”
以下是切尼最难忘的一些时刻:
关注特朗普“有预谋”的作为和不作为
在几次听证会中，切尼小心翼翼地不去告诫支持前总统的那一半人，而是保持中立关注特朗普本人她说有人通过向他的支持者灌输谎言来欺骗他们。她说，特朗普故意制造了美国受到外部势力威胁的错误印象，要求他的支持者为他而战，尽管事实上这“完全是胡说八道”。
“唐纳德·特朗普知道，如果我们的国家受到威胁，数百万支持他的美国人会站出来捍卫我们的国家。他们会冒着生命和自由的危险去保护她。他正在利用他们的爱国主义，”她说。“1月6日，唐纳德·特朗普将他们对国家的热爱变成了反对我们的国会大厦和宪法的武器。”
“特朗普总统召集了暴徒，召集了暴徒，点燃了这次袭击的火焰，”她说。
1月6日专责委员会副主席利兹·切尼:“特朗普总统召集了暴徒，聚集了暴徒，点燃了这次袭击的火焰。”https://t.co/W2f3oCDYwh # 1月6日委员会听证会 pic.twitter.com/po9i8qu6dE
—美国广播公司新闻(@ABC)2022年6月10日
她说，在利用他的支持者的同时，特朗普拒绝回应停止1月6日袭击的呼吁，甚至拒绝回应共和党盟友的请求，拒绝做她所说的他的就职誓言所要求的事情。
“他拒绝捍卫我们的国家和我们的宪法。他拒绝做每个美国总统都必须做的事情，”她说。“在1月6日之后的日子里，几乎没有任何政党的人会为特朗普总统的行为辩护。今天没有人应该这样做。”
切尼告诉支持特朗普的共和党同事，他们也受到了欺骗。
“很难接受特朗普总统滥用了你的信任。他欺骗了你。许多人会编造借口来忽略这个事实。但这是事实，”她在委员会第六次公开听证会结束时表示。“我希望这不是真的。但确实如此。”
特朗普辩称“不是一个易受影响的孩子”或“故意视而不见”
因为意图需要被证明刑事起诉切尼反复强调，作为美国最有权力的人，特朗普作为总统处于“独特的地位”，他“比几乎任何其他美国人都更了解没有广泛的选举欺诈。”
她说，有了这一点，就不能为特朗普“被欺骗或不理智”辩护了。
“特朗普总统是一个76岁的老人，他不是一个容易受影响的孩子，”她在夏季的一次听证会上说。“就像我们国家的其他人一样，他要为自己的行为和选择负责...唐纳德·特朗普不能通过故意视而不见来逃避责任。任何理由都不能为特朗普总统在1月6日暴力袭击中的行为开脱。”
康斯托克还指出，切尼如何依靠特朗普的核心圈子反复证明他在1月6日被告知他已经输了，并被告知做得更多，这可能有助于检察官的审判。
“她是一名检察官，她非常小心地起诉这个案件。她已经证实，所有那些告诉他失败的证人——那些告诉他没有法律诉讼的人——都是共和党人。“所以，他的竞选经理(比尔·斯特皮恩)、(前司法部长)比尔·巴尔、(前特朗普顾问)凯莉安妮·康威、他的女儿(伊万卡·特朗普)，所有这些将在审判时作证的证人，他们都是共和党人。”
她在委员会上重复道10月份的最后一次听证会他们的证据表明，特朗普是1月6日事件的核心原因，尽管他有无数次机会承认摆在他面前的事实。
她说:“他有所有这些信息，但他仍然有意识地选择欺骗性地声称选举被盗，向州官员施压，要求改变选举结果，制造虚假的选举名单，试图贿赂我们的司法部，召集成千上万的支持者到华盛顿。”“迄今为止，大量证据向我们表明，1月6日事件的核心原因是一个人，唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)，很多人都追随他。没有他，这一切都不会发生。”
称赞目击者比“50岁、60岁和70岁的老人”更勇敢
在整个听证会上，切尼特意感谢现场目击者的出现，并指出他们可能承受了巨大的压力而没有服从。她花了特别的时间来表扬出现的女性。
康斯托克告诉美国广播公司新闻部，“她理解唐纳德·特朗普对女性的厌恶，也许在某种程度上，委员会的男性可能不理解这一点。”“她知道特朗普会以不同于攻击男性的方式攻击这些女性证人。她知道这对他们来说有多危险，因为她自己也看到了，所以她小心翼翼地保护那些证人，但也赞扬他们的勇敢，并真正认识到这对他们来说有多困难。”
在委员会听取了卡西迪·哈钦森作为特朗普幕僚长马克·梅多斯(Mark Meadows)的前助手，切尼在作证时25岁，她称赞了哈钦森和其他女性，她说这些女性比一批应该更了解情况的年长男性表现出了更多的勇气。
“她独自坐在这里，在数百万美国人面前宣誓作证，”切尼这样评价哈钦森。“她一直知道她会受到特朗普总统以及那些躲在行政特权后面的50岁、60岁和70岁的男人的攻击。但是就像我们今天的证人一样，她有勇气，她还是做到了。卡西迪、莎拉和我们的其他证人，包括卡洛琳·爱德华兹警官、叶莎·莫斯和她的母亲鲁比·弗里曼，对美国妇女和美国女孩来说是一种激励。”
众议员利兹切尼赞扬1月6日委员会证人卡西迪哈钦森公开作证。“她自始至终都知道她会受到总统的攻击。特朗普和那些躲在行政特权后面的50岁、60岁和70岁的人。”https://t.co/owxAGW2Qhw pic.twitter.com/qiiUkXSx0I
—美国广播公司新闻(@ABC)2022年7月22日
“卡西迪首先作证的事实，”康斯托克补充说，“我认为，很大程度上是因为听证会是如何进行的，因为她信任利兹——利兹一旦作证，基本上就叫帕特·西波洛内，因为他还没有。”
在委员会随后的听证会结束时，切尼似乎发出警告直接对川普。
“在我们最后一次听证会后，特朗普总统试图在我们的调查中传唤一名证人——一名你在这些听证会上尚未见过的证人。那个人拒绝接听或回应特朗普总统的电话，而是提醒他们的律师注意这个电话。他们的律师提醒了我们。这个委员会已经向司法部提供了这些信息。“让我再说一遍:我们将认真对待任何影响证人证词的努力。”
切尼在另一个问题上说:“我认为大多数美国人都知道，试图影响证人不诚实地作证是非常严重的问题。”。
警告说这可能会再次发生
切尼向美国公众强调，委员会投入数千小时调查袭击的原因不是出于党派政治目的，而是为了防止另一个1月6日。
她说，这很可能会再次发生。
“我们的制度只有在有诚意的男男女女不顾政治代价让它们保持不变时才能保持。我们不能保证这些男人和女人下次还会在这里。任何未来的总统都倾向于尝试唐纳德·特朗普在2020年所做的事情，现在已经学会了不要安置可能碍事的人，”她在10月的最后一次听证会上说。“当总统无视法院的裁决是非法的，当他无视法治时，会发生什么?同胞们，这破坏了我们的共和国。”
在10月份的委员会听证会上，当被问及美国是君主制还是共和制时，她直接对着镜头回应了国父本·富兰克林的警告:“一个共和国，如果你能保持它的话。”
“考虑一下我们是否能再生存246年。地球上大多数地方的大多数人都没有获得自由。美国是个例外，”她说。“美国之所以能够继续存在，仅仅是因为我们坚持我们的建国者的原则，坚持我们的宪法。"
Liz Cheney's mission on Jan. 6 committee: Keep Donald Trump out of the White House
Rep. Liz Cheney will make a last high-profile stand against Donald Trump when the House Jan. 6 committee holds its final public meeting Monday -- as sources say it's preparing to recommend the first-ever criminal charges against a former president.
It's cost the Wyoming Republican her political career to take on Trump, but she's said she has no regrets -- making the case she has a higher mission: to keep him from ever regaining the White House.
After voting to impeach Trump, and then accepting an invitation to serve on the select committee, she lost her No. 3 House GOP leadership position and ultimately, her congressional seat.
But in doing so, she also won unlikely supporters as she exposed what she called Trump's seven-point plan to steal the election and admonished her Republican colleagues who, she said, lacked the courage to do the same.
"In our country, we don't swear an oath to an individual, or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution -- and that oath must mean something," Cheney said to open the first prime-time public hearing in June. "Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."
"The sacred obligation to defend this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president -- except one," she added. "As Americans, we all have a duty to ensure what happened on Jan. 6 never happens again, to set aside partisan battles to stand together to perpetuate and preserve our great republic."
Cheney is one of two Republicans on the nine-member panel, but unlike Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who announced last year he wouldn't seek reelection, Cheney continued her campaign while serving on the committee, embracing her role as a key player. After her primary loss In August, she told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that if had she wanted to save her career and keep the House seat she'd held for nearly six years, it would have required something she was unwilling to do: "Lie about the election," she said.
While each of the committee's nine members took turns leading the congressional hearings, it was Cheney's clarity and conviction that often stole the spotlight, with her acting very much like a criminal prosecutor trying a case against Trump.
"Liz really was the star," Norman Ornstein, political scientist and senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute told ABC News. "And she was the star first because the name, the intellect, the fact that you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody more conservative than her. All of that added to the impact of her power."
"The fact that she has been fearless in this process, knowing it would very likely cost her her seat, as it did, knowing that she was going to get death threats and more, she made it very clear that the priority here for her was protecting democracy against people trying to destroy it, including Donald Trump," he added. "All of that, plus the masterful way she handled the performance that she did on the committee, that's quite a legacy."
Former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, a Republican and ABC News contributor who served in the House with Cheney and donated to her reelection campaign, believes the committee was able to secure witnesses they might otherwise have had difficulty with because of Cheney's reputation.
"Because she knows all the players here, and had known them, she didn't let them hide," Comstock said. "I think she understood, at the end of the day, if we drag these people in, they aren't going to fall on the sword for him."
Here are some of Cheney's most memorable moments:
Focus on Trump's 'premeditated' action and inaction
Over the course of several hearings, Cheney was careful not to admonish the half of the country that supported the former president but to keep the focus on Trump himself as someone she said preyed on his supporters by feeding them lies. She said Trump knowingly created the false impression that America was threatened by an outside force, asking his supporters to fight for him, despite the fact that it was "all complete nonsense."
"Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism," she said. "And on Jan. 6, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution."
"President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack," she said.
Jan. 6 select committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney: "President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack." https://t.co/W2f3oCDYwh #January6thCommitteeHearings pic.twitter.com/po9i8qu6dE
— ABC News (@ABC) June 10, 2022
While exploiting his supporters, she said, Trump refused to answer calls to stop the Jan. 6 assault, even pleas from Republican allies, to do what she said his oath of office required.
"He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every American president must," she said. "In the days after Jan. 6, almost no one of any political party would defend President Trump's conduct. And no one should do so today."
Cheney told her Republican colleagues who supported Trump that they, too, were deceived.
"It can be difficult to accept that President Trump abused your trust. That he deceived you. Many will invent excuses to ignore that fact. But that is a fact," she said at the close of the committee's sixth public hearing. "I wish it weren't true. But it is."
Argues Trump 'not an impressionable child' or 'willfully blind'
Because intent needs to be proven in criminal prosecutions, Cheney repeatedly argued that Trump -- as the nation's most powerful person -- was in a "unique position" as president to be "better informed about the absence of widespread election fraud than almost any other American."
With this, she said, there can be no defense that Trump was "duped or irrational."
"President Trump is a 76-year-old man, he is not an impressionable child," she said in a hearing over the summer. "Just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices ... Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind. Nor can any argument of any kind excuse President Trump's behavior during the violent attack on Jan. 6."
Comstock also noted how Cheney relied on Trump's inner circle to repeatedly establish he was told he had lost and told to do more on Jan. 6, potentially helpful to prosecutors in a trial.
"She's a prosecutor, and she was prosecuting this case very carefully. She has established that all of those witnesses who told him he lost -- who told him there was no legal case for him to pursue -- they're all Republicans," Comstock said. "So, his campaign manager [Bill Stepien], [former Attorney General] Bill Barr, [former Trump adviser] Kellyanne Conway, his daughter [Ivanka Trump], all of these witnesses who are going to testify to this when there is a trial, they're all Republicans."
She repeated at the committee's last hearing in October that their evidence has shown Trump to be the central cause of Jan. 6, despite having had countless chances to acknowledge the facts presented to him.
"He had all of this information, but still he made the conscious choice to claim fraudulently that the election was stolen, to pressure state officials to change election results, to manufacture fake electoral slates, to attempt to corrupt our Department of Justice, to summon tens of thousands of supporters to Washington," she said. "The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of this would have happened without him."
Praises witnesses as braver than '50-, 60- and 70-year-old men'
Throughout the hearings, Cheney made a point to thank the live witnesses for appearing, noting they might have been under immense pressure to not comply. She took particular time to praise the women who showed up.
"She understood, maybe in a way the men on the committee might not have, the misogyny of Donald Trump," Comstock told ABC News. "She knew that Trump was going to attack these women witnesses in a different way than he attacks men. She knew how dangerous that was for them, having seen it herself too, so she took care in protecting those witnesses, but also praising their bravery and really recognizing how difficult this was for them."
After the committee heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows who was 25 when she testified, Cheney praised Hutchinson and the other women who she said showed more courage than a tranche of older men who should know better.
"She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans," Cheney said of Hutchinson. "She knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege. But like our witnesses today, she has courage and she did it anyway. Cassidy, Sarah and our other witnesses, including Officer Caroline Edwards, Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, are an inspiration to American women and to American girls."
Rep. Liz Cheney praises Jan. 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson for testifying publicly."She knew all along that she would be attacked by Pres. Trump and by the 50, 60 and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege." https://t.co/owxAGW2Qhw pic.twitter.com/qiiUkXSx0I
— ABC News (@ABC) July 22, 2022
"The fact that Cassidy had testified in the first place," Comstock added, "I think, largely is because of how the hearings were being run, because she trusted Liz -- and Liz, once she had testified, basically called out Pat Cipollone since he hadn't yet."
At the close of the committee's following hearing, Cheney appeared to issue a warning directly to Trump.
"After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation -- a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call, and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice," Cheney said. "Let me say one more time: we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously."
"I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns," Cheney said at another point.
Warns it could happen again
Cheney hammered home to the American public watching that the reason the committee put thousands of hours into investigating the attack was not for partisan political purposes but to prevent another Jan. 6.
And it could very well happen again, she said.
"Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost. We have no guarantee that these men and women will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way," she said at the last hearing in October. "What happens when the president disregards the court's rulings as illegitimate, when he disregards the rule of law? That, my fellow citizens, breaks our republic."
Speaking directly to the camera in the committee's hearing in October, she echoed the warning attributed to founding father Ben Franklin when asked whether America was a monarchy or a republic: "a republic, if you can keep it."
"Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years. Most people in most places on Earth have not been free. America is an exception," she said. "And America continues only because we bind ourselves to our founders' principles, to our Constitution."
