Committee leaders of the Wyoming Republican Party voted by a wide margin on Saturday to censure Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) over her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting a riot on the U.S. Capitol last month, according to multiple reports.
The Casper Star-Tribune was the first to report the vote from the Wyoming GOP state central committee which comes after Cheney held onto her seat as the No. 3 House Republican during a closed-door House GOP conference vote earlier this week.
Just eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee opposed censure in a vote that didn’t proceed to a formal count, according to the Associated Press.
The censure document argued that Cheney had voted to impeach Trump without offering the former president “formal hearing or due process.”
Per CNN, the Wyoming GOP also said that it intends to “withhold any future political funding” from Cheney and demanded that she repay donations to her 2020 campaign from the state and county GOP.
The committee also falsely claimed in its resolution that the Capitol insurrection was “instigated by Antifa and BLM radicals,” and declared that Trump had not called for violence during the rally before the Capitol was stormed, the Casper Star-Tribune said.
Cheney responded to state GOP’s move to censure her on Saturday by saying in a statement obtained by the Star-Tribune that she had been “compelled” voted in favor on Trump’s impeachment based on a commitment to her oath of office.
“My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution. Wyoming citizens know that this oath does not bend or yield to politics or partisanship,” Cheney said.
“I will always fight for Wyoming values and stand up for our Western way of life. We have great challenges ahead of us as we move forward and combat the disastrous policies of the Biden Administration. I look forward to continuing to work with officials and citizens across Wyoming to be the most effective voice and advocate in defense of our families, industries and communities,” she added.
On Wednesday a majority of House Republicans voted in favor of Cheney remaining conference chair — news that was welcomed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who boosted her as a in a statement on Monday.
In spite of managing to survive the Wednesday conference vote, Cheney has faced a barrage of criticism from Trump loyalists in Congress who were furious over her decision to cast a “vote of conscience” condemning Trump to a second impeachment by the House.
Cheney was joined by a group of nine other Republicans who have similarly faced backlash in the wake of their votes to impeach the ex-president for “incitement of insurrection,” following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
By Saturday, at least a dozen county-level Republican committees in Wyoming had passed censure resolutions of their own against Cheney, according to the Star-Tribune.
Teton County Chairman Alex Muromcew who spoke out against the move to censure Cheney during the state central committee’s Saturday meeting, said that Republicans could vote her out in 2022 if they disagreed with her position, per the Star-Tribune.
“Let’s resist this left-wing trend of ‘cancel culture,’ trying to censure and get rid of anybody that we disagree with,” he said, according to the paper.
