Liz Cheney Wonders if Trump Speech was ‘Premeditated’ Call to Violence

When we think about the Republicans who are most likely to defy the will of the far-right, we had long spoken about Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney.

These are the folks who were, more often than not, at odds with former President Donald Trump, and whose political careers were very much a tightrope walk between their constituents and their conscience.

Now, as Trump is set to begin an unprecedented second impeachment trail on Tuesday, another Republican legislator is wondering aloud whether or not Trump had purposefully worked to invoke the crowd that stormed the Capitol, and whether or not he had any “premeditation” on the subject. 

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) said on Sunday’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that there is a “massive criminal investigation underway” into former President Donald Trump’s role in inciting the deadly riot at Capitol Hill on January 6.

When asked if she would vote to convict Trump, Cheney said, “If I was in the Senate, I would listen to the evidence. I think that is the role the Senate has as jurors. I would also point out that the Senate trial is a snapshot. There’s a massive criminal investigation underway. There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on Jan. 6 and in the days before.”

And then…

She continued, “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They will want to know, for example, if the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered, and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved as there should be.”

Trump’s legal team, who are certain that an acquittal is already a done deal for the ex-President, are believed to be considering a defense that focuses on the perceived anomalies of the 2020 election rather than the insurrection itself.