A day after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) announced her support for impeaching President Trump, the President’s allies in the House Republican conference circulated a petition on Wednesday urging its third-ranking member to resign from her leadership position over her impending impeachment vote.
In announcing her support for impeachment on Tuesday, Cheney decried the President for having “summoned” and “assembled” the mob that stormed the Capitol. The third-ranking House Republican argued that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
A handful of other House Republicans also joined the Democrat-led effort to impeach Trump on Tuesday, which include Reps. John Katko (R-NY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Fred Upton (R-MI) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA).
The House Republicans’ petition to oust Cheney called for a special GOP conference meeting as it slammed its chair by complaining about how her support for impeachment has “been used multiple times by Democrats as justification” for the process.
“Cheney’s personal position on issues does not reflect that of the majority of the Republican Conference and has brought the Conference into disrepute and produced discord,” the petition said, before calling on Cheney to “immediately resign” from her position as the House GOP conference chair.
And the Cheney backlash begins.
Conservative hardliners are calling for a special GOP conference meeting to push out Liz Cheney from her leadership post, after she came out in support of impeachment. pic.twitter.com/hGO7Q5W4jI
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) January 13, 2021
Ahead of the House vote expected to impeach Trump on Wednesday, Trump loyalist Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) — who the President awarded the Medal of Freedom to on Monday — told reporters that House Republicans “ought to vote on” whether to keep Cheney as conference chair.
“I think she’s totally wrong,” Jordan said, according to Fox News.
Responding to the House GOP petition later Wednesday, Cheney told Politico that she is “not going anywhere” as she repeated her rationale from the day before that supporting impeachment is “a vote of conscience.”
“It’s one where there are different views in our conference,” Cheney said, according to Politico. “But our nation is facing an unprecedented, since the civil war, constitutional crisis. That’s what we need to be focused on. That’s where our efforts and attention need to be.”
